L.A. Times: Whoops, They Were Explorers and Not Cops
The L.A. Times ran this correction yesterday (thanks to Bradley J. Fikes):
Boyle Heights police station: A caption in Sunday’s California section, accompanying a photo and article about the opening of a Boyle Heights police station, misidentified Explorer Scouts in the photo as L.A. police officers.
That’s one error corrected, and only two more to go.
Apparently they still believe that the area covered by the new Hollenbeck station is a circle with a diameter of over 30 miles, because they didn’t correct that part.
Nor do I see a correction of the story where they claimed water weighs less than half of what it actually does.
Hey, 1 for 3 ain’t bad, I guess would be the editors’ logic. In the major leagues, .333 gets you a nice contract.
Of course, this paper really isn’t in the major leagues any more.
P.S. Someone contacted me privately and complained that I was nitpicking when I pointed out this error. Perhaps, but I think the editors of the local paper need to know what the local police agency’s uniform looks like. Seriously: they do.
Hey, the elitists at newspapers have got to accept criticism if they want to dump on bloggers.
Remember the internet needs editors to catch errors. Well, the internet is catching the editors’ errors.
PCD (1d8b6d) — 9/23/2009 @ 7:19 amNitpicking? I thought that’s what their battalion of fact-checkers were paid for.
Old Coot (83c1d1) — 9/23/2009 @ 7:47 amIt’s just pitiful when some lefty (It has to have been a lefty) complains that you are picking on the newspaper because they got facts wrong in a story. When I was a kid, the Chicago Tribune had a service where you could call the “answer line” and they would provide an answer to any question. My mother used to call every couple of weeks or so and nobody ever complained. They considered themselves the information experts and were proud of it. They even knew what water weighed.
Boy, are those days gone.
Mike K (addb13) — 9/23/2009 @ 8:03 amPeople that live in Los Angeles could tell that it wasn’t LAPD because of the color of the uniform.
People that live in ivory towers couldn’t.
Jim (1b68f1) — 9/23/2009 @ 8:29 amHardly nitpicking. As Jim said, it’s a basic, telltale sign of ignorance about the community. Selective ignorance, at that. The LAT is probably more familiar with the color of SEIU shirts.
Brother Bradley J. Fikes, C.O.R. (5c0602) — 9/23/2009 @ 8:46 am“Of course, this paper really isn’t in the major leagues any more.”
And nowadays the Major League is constantly being beaten by the upstarts in the Minors.
So sad.
tyree (60c95a) — 9/23/2009 @ 8:53 amWe told them a long time ago to stop being blinded by their left wing bias, and they didn’t listen while they had a chance.
People don’t buy the paper to read what is accurate.
They buy the paper to read what they wish was accurate.
Amphipolis (b120ce) — 9/23/2009 @ 8:57 amWhat it actually shows, more than anything else, is that the “reporter” for this story didn’t actually talk face-to-face with any no-kidding police officers about how they felt about the building or anything else. It was likely primarily phone interviews and stock photos captioned post-event by a newsroom newbite trying to makes his bones who wasn’t even at the event. Tie in a few cut-n-pastes from the press release, and VIOLA, you’ve got a “news” article.
In other words, just plain sloppy.
Steve B (5eacf6) — 9/23/2009 @ 9:01 amI didn’t read the article with the water flub but would be willing to bet the reporter without a clue could expound on the dangers of AGW ad nauseam.
Chris (a24890) — 9/23/2009 @ 9:07 amThanks a lot!!! You have single-handedly reduced the number of Los Angeles “police” officers by the hundreds! (so I guess we cannot count the Explorers, boy scouts, security guards, hall monitors)
Californio (08da63) — 9/23/2009 @ 9:09 amHEY! Wait a minute…… SH*T! We need more cops!!!!)
A Pint’s a Pound the World Around,
except in Boyle Heights.
Mitch (890cbf) — 9/23/2009 @ 9:56 amAccuracy is really quite overrated! Geez, why bother printing the damn paper then?
pesto (44bf37) — 9/23/2009 @ 10:48 amWell done, Bradley and Patterico.
DRJ (b008f8) — 9/23/2009 @ 2:55 pmThank you, DRJ. And megakudos to Patterico for making it all possible with superhuman endurance.
Brother Bradley J. Fikes, C.O.R. (a320fb) — 9/23/2009 @ 3:40 pmHey P:
For what it’s worth, I did notice the correction to the water weight measurement on the online version. I don’t get the dead tree version anymore, so I have no idea if they corrected it there too.
JVW (370364) — 9/23/2009 @ 4:33 pmJVW, good catch!
Brother Bradley J. Fikes, C.O.R. (0ea407) — 9/23/2009 @ 7:54 pmPlease, list the Major League newspapers starting, I presume, with Variety and The Hollywood Reporter.
Howard Veit (0d2b4f) — 9/24/2009 @ 1:56 amJudging from the LAT’s past coverage, they think the LAPD uniform is black, with silver runes on the collar; and high boots.
“Makin’ mock o’ uniforms that guard you when you sleep,
Is cheaper than those uniforms — an’ they’re starvation cheap.”
— Kipling
But the Times has to pick a side, and it isn’t just Chuck who reflexively goes with the criminals.
PS — how bout nuking the slimebag “dating site” spam — the troopies say those sites are all scams anyhow, and trust me… warriors have no problem getting dates in the analog world, when dates they seek.
Kevin R.C. O'Brien (e36117) — 9/24/2009 @ 8:27 am