MHS HOCKEY ARTICLE BLUNDER....
Recently reporter Adam Roberts wrote an article about our Milton High hockey team. For starters, I will give him respect because it is an amazing feeling to be in the newspaper for the hockey team. This article was extremely comical for one reason, THE LACK OF REASEARCH!
Reading the introduction gave the readers a promising outlook of this year's team that includes many skilled players with leadership qualities. Then the article took a turn for the worse when he began listing players. He said, "Leading the way for the Wildcats is Senior Captain Ken Landry" Now reading this there is one thing that should be known, there is nobody on the team named Ken Landry, there is however, a Kevin Lamere. He then went on to say that I was the catalyst on defense, which is completely untrue because I do not play defense, and should have been talking about Junior Dan Curran. Roberts then went on to talk about the top offensive line of Brian Higgins, Paul Curran, and Will England. There is also a problem with that because that is the line that I am on, along with the fact that Willy England plays defense. Lastly, when talking about goalie Jay Hankard, Roberts called him "Jay Haggerty".
These name mistakes are not acceptable because it gave a sign of Robert's lack of research. It also showed disrespect towards our program. It looks like Roberts must have had a phone call interview with our coach Paul Noonan because there is no possible way Coach Noonan would mess up his players own names.
As we speak Dan and Paul Curran as well as Jay Hankard next to me helping write this post. As my friends, they took the same bias towards the article as me; comical and a little embarrassing. They did not expect reading an article that lacked the proper information, which makes them realize that reporters need to have the right information if they want the readers to like what has been posted.
Overall the entire hockey team appreciated Robert's effort to expose the Milton High School Hockey Program, even if the writing was sub-par and offended some of the players named in it.
Terence, I’m not sure if I should laugh for cringe at this post. When I think of how well you and your peers all write, it makes me frustrated to think that there are bad journalists out there. You should apply for his job. Anyway, I’m glad that you’ve had this experience. There are many things that I hope you guys learn this year in this class. One is that you should always be skeptical of journalists. Not only do they have rhetorical agendas of their own, but they are also very fallible. Of course, unlike you, who read this article and obviously knew the mistakes, so many of us are unable to identify mistakes writers make. Regrettably, we all just assume that what we read is true.
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ReplyDeleteBefore I got on a rant on blunders such as this one, I'd just like to say this post cracked me up.
Anyways, as someone who has to write for a decent audience, I find that the pressure to have perfect writing is insane. Commenters attack you, bosses get mad at you, and worst of all, you lose credibility. I am surprised that Adam Roberts can sustain the patch with all of the misspelt names that I see on that website. For example, I decided to check it out to read the recap of the Milton-Newton North game just for kicks and noticed they spelled our captain Khiry's name as "Khirmy" (yet, he managed to spell Newton North's Avi Adler-Cohen's name properly).
For me to criticize Adam Roberts, however, is wrong. I've spelled names wrong before (just read my worst article ever: http://www.newenglandrecruitingreport.com/news/article/1686/Niang-Stars-in-Mansfield.php) and have grammatical errors all of the time. My boss at Dime Magazine sends me a personal e-mail every time I spell a name wrong, which gets pretty embarrassing after a while.
But Roberts and I are lucky. We don't have quite the audience that New York TImes college basketball analyst Peter Thamel has. Recently, Thamel simply broke a story about Kentucky's international superstar, Enes Kanter, being ineligible to play for the rest of the season. Let's keep in mind, Thamel did not make the decision have Kanter ineligible. Later in the day, Thamel took on an attack by his twitter followers. They said vile and horrible things to Thamel. One commenters said,"I hope you get in a car crash tonight lose your vision and the use of your legs." That was the nicest comment of all of them.
Journalism is a serious field, but sometimes the readers should lighten up. It is unprofessional to misspell names, but to wish ill on someone for simply breaking a story is wrong. With all of these troubles, maybe there's a reason why newspapers are struggling to stay afloat. Readers are becoming too critical but in my opinion, they need to lighten up.
Sources: http://milton.patch.com/articles/fourth-quarter-surge-lifts-newton-north-over-milton-high
(Warning: these comments are not appropriate) http://www.cardchronicle.com/2011/1/7/1921970/kentucky-fans-are-taking-this-enes-kanter-news-in-stride
Lucas, yes, readers are becoming more critical. However, I wonder if this is because journalistic integrity seems to be decreasing. Yes, we probably should cut Roberts some slack. He is just a guy working hard. Yet, I do think that if a writer publishes something, he should be held to the highest standards of technical and factual precision.
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