RTFS. Then KTFS

When the chart after the second graf makes clear that the hed is flat wrong, you can conclude that someone failed to RTFS, or Read The Story:

September has been tough for stock investors. But if history is any guide, the last day of September may deliver one more blow to already battered markets, according to the financial blog Bespoke.

Looking at data as far as 1945, the S&P 500 has posted positive returns just 38% on the last day of September, making it one of the worst trading days of the year, according to Bespoke (as the included table illustrates).

By one of these two metrics, Sept. 30 is apparently tied for fifth on that coveted list of trading days least likely to see a positive closing for the S&P 500 -- neither "investors" nor "the worst" nor empire. (While Feb. 21 has produced a positive close less often, its overall loss is a little over half the size of the one that set headlines ablare at MarketWatch; which day should we consider worse for "investors"?)

The larger question is the KTFS one: Would you buy a used investment analysis (or advertising space at a site that offers investment analysis) from a place that apparently thinks past performance really does guarantee future results?

... If Wednesdays trading action follows the historical trend, things could get worse for investors before they get better. 

Or not. At this writing,* the S&P 500 is up 1.71% for the day; a few minutes ago, it was down 2.8%. Oops! Now it's plummeted to +1.68%. (The Dow industrials and the Nasdaq, both positive, seem unperturbed by the omens. Or not.) Those friendly games of chance at the county fair were made for advice like this. (Stop press! +1.73%!)

This tale came to the non-MarketWatch world's attention (at least, my attention) through the Drudge Report, where fictional heds about bogus correlations are the house special:

For Drudge, any story that sends the peasants out in search of gold and freeze-dried food is a good story. Outfits that don't want to be mistaken for that (+1.89%) might want to reconsider their approach to the art of the headline:

And with that, the S&P appears to have closed up nearly 2 points, which has as much to do with its historic performance on Sept. 30 as any other result would have.

* 3:40 p.m. EDT, if you're scoring along at home.

A thousand here, a thousand there ...

What's that minimum distance again?

Michigan's Sex Offender Registry law is so vague that parts of it are unconstitutional, including the requirement that offenders stay at least 1,000 feet from schools, a federal judge has ruled.

Sorry, didn't catch that -- could you repeat it in the third graf?

Regarding the 1,000-foot school safety zone, he said offenders are left to guess where the zones were and are not provided with enough information from the state to abide by the restriction.

It's probably worth noting that the story isn't at the top of the front -- relegated to a single column, of course, by Opening Day -- because the local fishwrap determined independently that the alleged "safety zone" is too hard to follow. It's there because that's what the judge found, and the deck needs to be as clear as the main hed in explaining how the paper knows what it knows.

 

 

RTFS

It may be "New York's Hudson River," but there's quite a bit of New York that's nowhere near "NYC." Newburgh, as the story notes, is somewhat upstream -- as in, north of West Point upstream.

Look, I know the communist New York media have a little trouble every now and then with North Carolina geography, but we don't have to return the favor.

RTFS, Fair 'n' Balanced-style

Doesn't matter if you're out saving the world, doesn't matter if you're standing alone between the indifferent public and the Maoist hordes waiting just beyond the firelight. You still have to read the story before you write the hed:

The mother of a Florida middle school student is upset after her 13-year-old daughter came home from school and told her a teacher put tape over her mouth.

And while we're at it: Why are we not told whether duct tape played its central role?

RTFS: It's the thought that counts

The curse of letting the facts get in the way of a good story! Alas for Fox, the "killer chimp" didn't (so far) actually kill anybody, which is generally considered sort of a prerequisite for being a "killer chimp."* But that's what elevates it from a bit of garden-variety editing incompetence into something worth talking about -- the touch of Fox ideology that, however briefly, let KILLER CHIMP stalk the wilds of Connecticut.

Ideology isn't always about Democrats and Republicans; more often, it's about the way the world ought to be -- or at least, the way the world ought to look. And in Fox World, killer chimps and incest dads are all stalking the streets with the mysterious "Josh," who might be Little Caylee's father (if what Casey told Melina is true). It's a pretty scary place. Too bad we've voted out all the people who could save us now!

* On the bright side (if you're a Fox editor, at least), chimps don't usually have a very good handle on libel law.

Man eating tiger

If you're among those people who think copy editors are supercilious semi-pedants who don't even understand the rules they claim to venerate, hang on. Somebody downtown is about to hand you a fresh box of ammunition.

Bit of back story, on the off chance your newspaper doesn't keep you up to date on the Fractious Near East. Hamas is marking its 21st anniversary,* and the proceedings include a skit in which a guy plays a captive Israeli soldier pleading for his freedom. Here's the AP:

In the skit, Hamas paraded a Palestinian speaking Hebrew and dressed in an Israeli soldier's uniform -- a reference to Israeli Sgt. Gilad Schalit, captured by Hamas-allied militants in June 2006. "I miss my Mom and Dad," said the man playing the Israeli soldier, kneeling as he spoke.

Seems pretty clear, doesn't it? A Palestinian (speaking in Hebrew) is playing an Israeli soldier. Let's see how the Freep handles it:

In the skit, Hamas paraded a Palestinian-speaking Hebrew dressed in an Israeli soldier's uniform -- a reference to Israeli Sgt. Gilad Schalit, captured by Hamas-allied militants in June 2006.

One of my favorite Fowlerisms is the example for hyphenating noun-participle combinations: the need to distinguish "man eating tiger" from "man-eating tiger." That's the difference here. Rather than, oh, asking the AP why it's using a different transliteration of Shalit's family name and when he was promoted,** the Freep is changing the meaning of the sentence about as far as it can be changed: from "Hebrew-speaking Palestinian" to "Palestinian-speaking Hebrew."

There's a lot you have to not know to produce an edit like that -- whether it's appropriate to call people Hebrews, or whether Palestinian is a language -- over and above the ability to forget all the context in one paragraph before moving on to the next. If the Freep is intent on showing that the copy desk is little more than a dangerously inflamed appendix on the body journalistic, it's off to a good start.

* Interesting to think how different the world looked in December 1987, isn't it?
** I honestly don't know; AP has him a corporal as recently as May, and the Times has "Cpl. Gilad Shalit" (the spelling Ha'aretz's English edition uses) in a story from Dec. 4. If any Middle Eastern readers can shed light on the topic, please feel free.

First, do harm

We all like to Omit Needless Words. The more Needless Words you omit, the more Needful Words you can include. Eight lines is an inch of text, and when you serve an inch less foam, you can serve an inch more beer.

Trouble comes when you fire up the chainsaw before you RTFS: Omit Needless Words becomes just Omit Words, and that's a really good way to make the paper (and the writer, and more or less the whole profession) look really stupid. Here's a lede:

WASHINGTON - Anyone who thinks Sarah Palin is just a pretty face has never looked at her resumé.

"Needless word!" cries some editor. And the verbal blade goes snicker-snack:

WASHINGTON - Anyone who thinks Sarah Palin is just a pretty face never looked at her résumé.

That's the version that appears in today's 1A centerpiece. (Note the added vigilance on résumé). Trouble is, the "has" in "has never looked" hadn't finished its earthly tasks:

Or run against her -- or gone hunting with her.

If you think Sarah's just a pretty face, you never gone hunting with her, all right. Nor never run against her, neither. We done incorrected us a grammar right slam into the second graf.

The story has a Gannett byline (elsewhere; the Freep just credits "news services"), but it doesn't appear yet on the Gannett wire at Lexis, so it's hard to say conclusively what the "original" is. Several papers are running it with the auxiliary in place, and a few others join the Freep in the ain't-no-part-of-nothing version. My bet is still on "editing error." Even bad writers aren't usually that bad in that particular way. And this writer is a ... OK, let's say he's a "workmanlike" writer. Lots of the prose could really use some editorial help:

At 44, she is the youngest and first female governor of Alaska and now the first woman on a GOP presidential ticket.

Maybe it's a stretch to read that as "(youngest) and (first) (female governor)," rather than "(youngest) and (first female) (governor)." Maybe it isn't. But a choice between clumsy and silly isn't much of a choice at all. Why not just make it two sentences?

Palin has been described as colorful, outspoken and has been known to buck her party, Walsh said.

I like a candidate who has been described as has been known to buck her party. See why people have been known to appreciate those Strunk & White guidelines?

When she was three months old, the family moved to Alaska, where moose hunting and distance running filled weekends.

Kilt her a moose when she was only three, did she? After winning her a 5K on her stubby little legs?*

If your goal is to make mediocre writing sound better, there's no shortage of stuff to do in this story -- or, really, anywhere in the fields of news writing. But you need to start by actually reading the text. Otherwise, you're going to omit a needful word from the Basic Rule: First, do no harm.

* It's worse in the Freep version: "When she was 3 months old, the family moved to Alaska, where moose hunting and distance running filled her weekends." Again, you can't tell for sure whether the Freep made things worse or just blew another chance to make things less bad. But at least the Freep desk followed AP style for age!

Don't bogart that paired-samples t-test

Start => All Pro- grams => Access- ories => Calculator. Got it? Now that you've figured out the approximate cost per ounce, it's time to figure out why there are more than twice as many ounces in the lede as there seem to be in the cutline.

Over in the Triangle Buro, Strayhorn (who found this one in the N&O) notes: I guess this reminds us that Math is Hard, but getting a story to match the hed and cutline really isn't.

That nice Mr. Gates put a calculator at your work station. You're on your own for the suspicion part.