Re-read for accuracy, grammar and spelling June 4, 2007
Posted by Jonathan Hewett in : Headlines, Journalism, News, Newspapers, Online, Typos , 1 comment so farIt’s tempting to think the Evening Standard was aiming at irony with this billboard. But that would be too subtle a strategy to succeed, I suspect — and a limited readership (although perhaps under-targeted…)
The same error in The Times Online was corrected — but only after it had been published on the site and started to show in news feeds, as Adrian Monck noted. It did appear online in that form on The Times Online, as Google’s cache showed for a while:
The corrected headline then appears to have replaced the previous version in Google’s cache, too — although a reference to it lives on in one of the ‘Have your say’ comments from a reader, referring to the uncorrected headline:
“Tory resigns after grammer school row” — such a headline in the Times is a case against comprehensives.
Dagmar Alpen, Cologne, Germany
Confusing the readers: divergent stories from the same source June 1, 2007
Posted by Jonathan Hewett in : Journalism, News, Newspapers, Readership, Teaching resources , 2comments
Confusing if they see the front pages of the Daily Mail and the Daily Express, that is. Choose between “Is the house price boom over?” and “House prices still soaring” respectively.
These are going in my file of possible examples to look at with students — at first glance, the stories look contradictory. On closer inspection, it’s a matter of emphasis, both using Land Registry figures in different ways: the Mail story concentrates on those for the month of April, while the Express piece looks at the annual increase.
Both angles were fairly clear in the Land Registry source document (PDF here), although the annual 9.1% increase was flagged up more prominently.
One aspect of stories that students sometimes find tricky to pick up, at least to start with, is how a chosen angle might play with readers. Here it’s “welcome news for homeowners” (Express) or “end of the 11-year property boom [...] alarm bells sounded [...] bubble appears to be bursting [...] situation now is likely to be even worse” (Mail).