Is grammar and proof reading gone from journalism?

Obvious Desperate Breakfasts

Arghus wrote: »

Basic errors are creeping in more and more. There's a pressure to rush content out - news stories need to be read about almost instantaneously and there is always a need for spurious click bait - so corners get cut in terms of attention to detail.

Also, quite a lot of the time these stories are written by unprofessional journalists who aren't earning a great deal, if they're earning at all - but who'll be churning out story after story day after day.

It's far cry from back in the day when newspapers and other forms of printed media had a bit more time before having to publish and employed professional journalists and sub-editors and such.

You can blame the writers, but, personally, I think it's a reflection of the times: We want content and news, we want it now, but don't want to pay for it. Fair enough, but don't be too surprised if standards drop as a result.

Still though, I've read a lot of old newspaper articles and there are surprisingly a lot of mistakes: typos, misspellings, omission of words. A lot of big hitters too like the New York Times. The New York Times has a disclaimer saying that transcription errors occur when digitising their archive. Those transcription errors are always obvious. But the mistakes I’ve seen have been in articles I’ve read where you are reading off the actual original newspaper page.

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Newspapers, having mostly failed to monetize in the digital age, are cutting back on staff as circulation and revenues decline. Independent News & Media has been running voluntary redundancy schemes for several years at this stage, and recently announced plans to cut back another 35 editorial staff in 2019. So that means fewer journalists, editors, proofreaders, etc.

The New York Times announced last year the elimination of its copy desk. Most other newspapers and publishers are also cutting back in this area. If a novel has glaring typos, will it affect sales? If not, executives don't care, because they can cut proofreaders and save money.

Arghus

Obvious Desperate Breakfasts wrote: »

Still though, I've read a lot of old newspaper articles and there are surprisingly a lot of mistakes: typos, misspellings, omission of words. A lot of big hitters too like the New York Times. The New York Times has a disclaimer saying that transcription errors occur when digitising their archive. Those transcription errors are always obvious. But the mistakes I’ve seen have been in articles I’ve read where you are reading off the actual original newspaper page.

Of course mistakes and typos have always been with us, but it does seem a bit more prevalent now.

Obvious Desperate Breakfasts

Arghus wrote: »

Of course mistakes and typos have always been with us, but it does seem a bit more prevalent now.

I used to think so too but having read so many old newspaper articles, I wouldn’t be so sure. Many of these old articles are littered with mistakes. Maybe they should be cut more slack because they didn’t have things like spellcheck to help them and there was a different kind of pressure then, trying to get big news stories out there in the evening editions and whatnot. But there were lots of mistakes made.

Pythagorean

The problem with spellcheckers, etc, is that they do not know the nuances and idiosyncrasies of the English language. Thus, they cannot pick up glaring errors like "breaks" instead of brakes, "muscles" instead of mussels, (I actually saw this in an article on seafood) !! Another horror I saw was "children in toe", and later on, in the same article "towing the line". I bet these were so called qualified writers, I would think that back in the days of the Primary Cert that these errors would have been spotted.

Birneybau

Sh!tty sites like the Daily Mail and its grotesque ilk basically crowdsource editing, changing articles with regards to glaring errors being pointed out in comments.

orourkeda1977

El Weirdo wrote: »

Start a Twitter account and expose them then.

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Obvious Desperate Breakfasts

Pythagorean wrote: »

The problem with spellcheckers, etc, is that they do not know the nuances and idiosyncrasies of the English language. Thus, they cannot pick up glaring errors like "breaks" instead of brakes, "muscles" instead of mussels, (I actually saw this in an article on seafood) !! Another horror I saw was "children in toe", and later on, in the same article "towing the line". I bet these were so called qualified writers, I would think that back in the days of the Primary Cert that these errors would have been spotted.

One thing I’ve noticed with increasing frequency in publications, messageboards and social media is ‘queue’ being used where it should be ‘cue’. So instead of “Cue the music”, it will be “queue the music”, for example.

And I’m not a perfect speller or grammarian but the amount of people who use ‘it’s’ when it should be ‘its’ staggers me. People on this very messageboard who are clearly intelligent make this mistake all the time. I distinctly remember that I learned that grammar rule in fifth class. I know because I remember the teacher and he was my fifth class teacher.

Bowlardo

I agree with OP for published /paid article from the press should be held to a higher standard but grammar Nazi on boards post are a bit much

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Two things at play here, both of which work to reduce standards in journalism.

The first, which has already been mentioned, is that the internet has undercut the business model of newspapers by offering their product for free. As a result, newspapers have become increasingly reliant on advertising revenue. This increases their dependence on traffic, which lends itself to clickbait and sensationalism, but also requires them to get their news out as fast as possible, which obviously increases errors.

The second is that the internet has fractured the media landscape, reducing readership for the mainstream outlets. Entry barriers to journalism, in terms of cost and also qualifications, have both fallen. A good example of this is the OP – he has quoted theliberal.ie, which is a free website started by a guy with no qualifications in journalism. Obviously, standards in journalism are going to fall when you start mixing in Joe Soap on the street who has an opinion with people who have studied journalism and apply journalistic standards to their professional work.

Before the internet your print and digital media choices were limited. You had a choice of a couple of sources of news on TV and a couple of newspapers. These would reflect a moderately diverse range of outlooks, but in general they were professional publications staffed with professional journalists. The standards journalists are duty bound to follow mean a certain fidelity to the truth. Hence you occasionally see retractions and apologies issued when standards aren’t followed. The mainstream newspapers are to a reasonable degree tethered to objective truth, which they are of course free to interpret based on their own ideological outlook, but they remain tethered to it all the same, and this keeps them from straying too far from the centre.

Some of their readers might not have liked this, but they didn’t have any other options.

The internet has changed that. Nowadays if you don’t like that a newspaper isn’t pandering to you on your particular ideological hobby-horse, rather than have those views challenged, which isn’t a particularly pleasant feeling for humans, you can start your own opinion site, or find someone similar who has already done so. It doesn’t matter that you’re not a journalist with no requirements or even understanding of how to apply objective fact-checking; you’re free to publish and it’s not unlikely that people with similar outlooks will consume your product, because it chimes with their worldview too. You like reading stuff that you agree with. It feels good to have your worldview reinforced. Whereas before, your biases would have been challenged by the media you consumed, now your biases are confirmed. Over time this takes you away from the centre and reinforces your belief that the mainstream, who either does not cover your desired topics or does not cover them the way you believe is right, is corrupt. If it is corrupt, you’re obviously not going to pay for it. If you don’t pay for it, standards will decline, which further reinforces your view that you shouldn’t pay for it. And so on it goes.

Pythagorean

Obvious Desperate Breakfasts wrote: »

One thing I’ve noticed with increasing frequency in publications, messageboards and social media is ‘queue’ being used where it should be ‘cue’. So instead of “Cue the music”, it will be “queue the music”, for example.

And I’m not a perfect speller or grammarian but the amount of people who use ‘it’s’ when it should be ‘its’ staggers me. People on this very messageboard who are clearly intelligent make this mistake all the time. I distinctly remember that I learned that grammar rule in fifth class. I know because I remember the teacher and he was my fifth class teacher.

It seems that these grammatical and spelling errors may originate back in primary school. One might wonder whether the pupils are being monitored adequately, or is it a case of " let them express themselves in their own way" ?
It's and its, I remember falling foul of this in 5th year, when I received a B rather than the A I expected for an essay. for using it's instead of its.

jimbobaloobob

I should probably add the only reason I quoted the liberal.ie is because it came up in the news reel on my phone and I've no idea how those news feeds are selected for me. I only clicked the article because the heading was of interest.

dxhound2005

So far nothing on the thread has suggested that the question prompted by the article is in any way justified. " Is grammar and proof reading gone from journalism?"

What has been established is that there have always been lapses in these areas. Generalisations claiming that it is worse now than in the past are completely unsupported by any evidence. It would take a massive amount of research over a long period to find out if the levels have changed.