Ever wonder why newspapers get such a bad rap? Take a look at a few of this week's goofs in my local paper, the Boone County Recorder:
Reporter Paul Mckibben is especially notorious for his stylishly obtuse writing. His article reporting the superior health of Boone County residents is particularly revealing. He says, Boone County is the second most healthy in the state and that Oldham County is ranked first for being the most healthy. Has the man never heard of a superlative? (For those who may not understand what that is, most healthy should be healthiest.)
Can a county, such as Oldham, be ranked first for being the most healthy? How redundant. Residents are either ranked first or are the healthiest. Get it? Maybe a Venn Diagram is in order here.
Mr. McKibben goes on to report that the good health of our citizens is due to the higher education and affluence we enjoy. He summarizes the findings of distinguished scholar Michael Samuels:
The reason high income and better education equate to better health is because most people are more aware of what they need to do such as the consequences of smoking or the lack of physical activity.
Is this even a sentence? Let's parse, shall we? Most people are more aware of what they need to do such as the consequences of smoking....or the lack of physical activity. It has been said that the verb is the most important component of the English language. Now we know why. I didn't know that the consequences of smoking or the lack of physical activity were things that could be done. And what about that business of "most people [being] more aware" of these non-activities. Sheesh!
Even if this made sense, McKibben reports that the Boone County residents ranked high in the smoking category. How can this be since our higher income and education levels have supposedly made most of us more aware of the resulting consequences?
Mr. McKibben says that our residents are more likely to have the leisure time to exercise and disposable income and therefore health insurance [which] allows them to get the proper screenings...I don't know anyone who thinks he or she has disposable income. Expendable perhaps, but not disposable. What really doesn't make sense is disposable income therefore health insurance. If people have money to burn, usually they have enough sense to sign up for a group health plan with their employer, and many of those premiums are company-paid. Health insurance normally isn't a consequence (if you can call it that) of income, be it disposable or expendable.
I won't over-analyze here, but you get the picture. (I'm not done with this particular article, but am giving it a rest so I can move on to other things.)
Don't get me wrong. I really enjoy the BCR, but I've noticed so many errors over the months I've been reading it. Although I haven't finished this week's edition, I've already come across a couple of additional errors which slipped by the editor:
Page A2 has a brief on Union resident Richard Knock being appointed to the Kentucky Horse Racing Authority. According to the brief, KHRA regulates horse racing and pari-mutuel wagering... Isn't the correct spelling mutual?
I noticed something else while scanning the paper for the quotes I've used here. The outside corners at the top of nearly every page show BCR Recorder. I thought "BCR" stood for Boone County Recorder, but to have BCR Recorder is like saying Boone County Recorder Recorder.
These are not isolated errors. A week or so ago, another article by Mr. McKibben announced a local festival and must have left something out of the report. It reads in part,
Highland Heights resident Bobby Mackey's bluegrass band, the Pine Hill Pickers, are [should be is] one of the bands scheduled to perform at the festival. The festival is named the Bobby Mackey Bluegrass Festival. He [Mackey] said that one could go outside with a country event such as the one at Jane's Saddlebag and it wouldn't work as well as the bluegrass. "Bluegrass festival has a charisma to it," he said.
What does he mean by saying that going outside with country event wouldn't work as well as the bluegrass? I won't even bother taking up space with this one.
A couple of other items come to mind, including a months-old misquote of a county employee who commented that the old courthouse was in much better shape since it had been remolded. (Can't you see the lawyers lining up now? Not to worry, they probably didn't notice it either.) The word should have been remodeled .
Well, it's late and I'm going to call it a night. I don't want anyone to get the idea that I have a grudge against Mr. McKibben or his editor, Nancy Daly. Everyone makes mistakes, often glaring ones. I'll probably look over this blog post later and see some of my own goofs. My point is just that people who write for a living could stand to be more careful.
I'm probably not the only one who's been taking notice.
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