Sloppy Journalism

[bjarvis]

I hate sloppy journalism.

Consider the following article, "Embattled lesbian fire chief to step down". Read the article, then ask yourself: what city are they talking about?

A search for the chief's name in google told me it's Minneapolis, but I had to go externally for something which should have been included. Sure, if the article was originally written for the home town paper it might be obvious but any journalist should know that their work will be distributed electronically and potentially show up anywhere: it's simply a poor practise to not include a clue. Just changing the lead in the second paragraph "Mayor R.T. Rybak announced..." to "Minneapolis Mayor R.T. Rybak announced..." would have been sufficient.

Annoying.

Comments

[billeyler.livejournal.com]

I had just read that article on AOL News about an hour ago...here's the Headline and the first paragraph on AOL...

Panel Rejects Lesbian Fire Chief's Resignation Deal

MINNEAPOLIS (Nov. 29) - A city panel recommended Tuesday that officials fire Bonnie Bleskachek, the nation's first openly lesbian big-city fire chief, in the wake of firefighter lawsuits accusing her of harassment and discrimination.

[bearfuz.livejournal.com]

I had the SAME reaction you did, except I didn't use Google to find out... after spending the time reading and rereading the article so as to confirm that the city was, in fact, not mentioned, I decided it wasn't important enough to me, and anyway I needed to [insert important task here].