A lot of the criticism bloggers receive is because of their writing skills - or perceived lack of them. Last night, I found something just as bad as what a lot of people go after bloggers for - on a “mainstream” news outlet’s site. Originally, I wanted to use it for a blog post about the topic discussed, but now it’s going to do double duty.
Check out this story by Justin Ware at NewsChannel 7 WSAW (a CBS affiliate out of Wisconsin) that describes how some local people are moving to satellite television service from cable, and getting a comparable product for a lower price. I had wanted to post about it because it had an example of one user moving away from cable even though he was losing his local channels - which he thought he could get later, anyway
My problem with the article is the names of the companies being repeatedly reported incorrectly. “Direct TV” is “DirecTV,” and EchoStar’s product is called DISH Network, not “Dish Network”, “dish”, or “dish network”. These are pretty easy things to straighten out and at least make consistent. Calling one company three things in one article is pretty unfortunate, don’t you think? While I’m sure I could find a couple of these if I really started to look, just as I could find plenty in blogs - I thought this was a good example to show to everyone.
However - I will point out that it is very good reporting for the network itself, because they are in the “local stations” batch that is referred to by one of those quoted - so technically they’ve lost that person as a viewer for the time being. Impressive that they didn’t “leave out” that fact.
1 response so far ↓
1 CT // May 28, 2004 at 9:35 pm
It sounds like the station’s editor was asleep at the switch… Or perhaps, in the age of constant cost-cutting, they don’t even have a copyeditor. The Digital Age has made everyone lazier; as a result, your writings can reach millions of people, but they’ll be so gobbledygooked that no one will understand you.