Tag: oops

How to destroy your page view rate

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To help drive traffic (and thus ad revenue), a lot of websites tease their stories on the front page either by cutting off the story just before the salient part or by writing an ambiguous headline. Here’s a perfect example from the Star’s website this morning, teasing the results of last night’s Over the Rainbow on CBC:

Teaser headline in the Star

Who could have won? I must click through.

See? In an actual newspaper that was more concerned with telling you the news than selling your eyeballs to advertisers, that headline would be sporting a name in place of the ellipsis. (Indeed, the story’s URL gives it away, but many people wouldn’t notice.) Instead, you have to click through just to see the headline, right? Except that someone forgot to tell the Star’s advertisers how this whole teaser thing works:

Spoiler on page 1

Never mind, I got it.

If anyone at the Star noticed the incongruity of a teaser headline with a spoiler right underneath it, they just doubled down on the ad instead of losing the coy headline:

The Star giveth away

I said I got it.

Someone really needs to tell a Star editor that there’s no point in teasing the headline if it’s surrounded by the story. Okay, a semi-silly teasing headline on a website, no big deal. That would have been that, except that the Star did the same thing in today’s dead tree edition, placing the spoiler not just on the same page as the teaser, but in a wraparound that covered the teaser up:

The Star is giving it away.

Want to find out who won? Please buy this paper and turn to page E1. Try not to look to the left.

Neat.

Todd Morden Mills

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It’s a pretty remarkable coincidence that just a few steps from Todmorden Road in Todmorden Mills in the Todmorden neighbourhood of East York—all of which were named after Todmorden, England—is a pumping station named after someone called Todd Morden:

Todd Morden pumping station sign

 

Now you might think that this is just another careless spelling error, but Google tells me that there really is a Todd Morden, and he’s this guy:

 

Google can’t tell me why he has a pumping station named after him, but I’m sure he deserves it.

And just in case you still think it’s merely a spelling error, I can assure you that although there is a Todmorden Mills pumping station, it’s a completely separate facility. In yet another remarkable coincidence, the two pumping stations share a single cabinet:

Mind you, I’m just assuming that these are two separate facilities and that surely the City of Toronto wouldn’t misspell the name of one of its heritage properties on a prominent sign inside that property. And surely workers tacking up the sign would have sent it back to the sign shop with a note as soon as they noticed the error, instead of just blindly posting it. Right?

The Star changes its mind again

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Back in January, I wrote about a story appearing on the Star‘s website that was silently updated after it was originally posted so that the new article said exactly the opposite of the original article. The Star‘s public editor responded to my complaint in her column, stating that allowing such silent story changes is “not the view of reputable news organizations that understand the vital importance of credibility.”

I’ve since noticed a number of similar silent changes on the Star‘s website, but none as egregious as yesterday afternoon’s story about Jason Kenney apologizing (or not) for calling a provincial minister an “asshole” in an email. Here was the headline as posted in the afternoon:

The original story said that Kenney had no intention of apologizing and included a quote from a Kenney spokesperson who dismissed the insult, saying that it wasn’t important to comment on every email that Kenney sends (presumably because apologizing to everyone Kenney calls an asshole would be a full-time job).

Shortly afterward, the story and headline were both updated while still posted under the original link:

The new story indicated that Kenney had indeed apologized and the dismissive quote from the spokesperson was nowhere to be seen. This isn’t a mere revision, it’s revisionism.

So here’s my problem: if a story changes after you post it to your website, you should either clearly state in the article that the story has progressed from what was earlier published, or (better) post a separate article with a note in the first article pointing to the new one. Sure, go ahead and fix minor spelling mistakes and grammatical errors in-line. But simply updating a story to this extent without acknowledging it is, well, not the sign of a “reputable news organization.” Another complaint to the public editor is on the way.

Grossest TTC e-alert ever

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This TTC alert just popped into my inbox:

ALL CLEAR: All earlier delays on Yonge University Spadina line have cleared. Regular service has resumed. We apologize for any incontinence.

I’m not sure what caused the delays in the first place, but it must have been quite the mess.

(And this is a perfect example of why I read things twice before I hit the “send” button.)

The Star fesses up

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Kathy English, the Star‘s public editor, dedicated her column today to addressing my complaint about headline switching on its website.

In her column, English reported that the journalist who wrote the story had misunderstood the council vote and only realized her error after the story went live on the Star‘s website. The reporter and her editor updated the online story and headline without noting the significant change in the article. I’m not sure if that’s any better than my original thought on seeing the flip-flop, which was that the Star had prepared two headlines and accompanying stories in advance and had simply posted the wrong one. Neither option is an excuse for not posting a correction on something like this.

Clarifying that the Star‘s corrections policy does apply to the web site, English wrote:

The Star’s accuracy and corrections policy applies to all content on all platforms. It says that errors, in print or online, must be corrected clearly, promptly and prominently. It also states, “Building trust in the digital world demands that the Star is seen to be transparent.”
[…]
In recent months, I’ve grown increasingly concerned about the Star’s level of transparency about online errors, having come across far too many examples of the newsroom “fixing” stories without acknowledging mistakes.

I’m quite surprised to discover that the Star‘s corrections policy holds the website to the same standard as the print edition, and can only assume that its requirements are disregarded by a significant proportion of Star writers and editors. I’ve lost count of how many silent corrections I’ve seen on the Star‘s website. I may laugh at spelling mistakes and nonsensical sentence fragments, but getting a story plain wrong and then not owning up to it is just too much.

Call me old-fashioned, but I believe that online media should be held to the same standard as any other media when it comes to accuracy. When an error is made, a correction should be noted and published. Both online-only publications like Slate and traditional broadsheets like the New York Times adhere to this standard for web content. Locally, Torontoist started doing it in January 2008 under then Editor-in-Chief David Topping and remains one of few, if not the only Toronto media outlet that reliably appends public corrections to articles that originally contained errors ranging from misspelled names or misstated dates all the way up to mistaken facts. It’s kind of sad that four years on, major media in this town is still catching up.

The Star tries to make up its mind

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[January 28 update: the Star‘s public editor addressed my complaint in her column today. Here’s my reaction.]

[January 26 update: the Star finally prepended a correction to the article yesterday, more than a full day later. I’ll have more to say about it in a couple of days.]

Although the Star is somewhat notorious for its editing mistakes, it’s not often that you see the same story covered under two completely contradictory headlines. But such was the case today when a story about a raise for town councillors in Whitchurch-Stouffville first appeared and was later updated:

Town council votes itself a giant raise. Or not.

Half an hour later:

Town council votes itself a giant raise. Or not.

I didn’t have a chance to read the first version of the story, but it’s clear that at least a couple of the early commenters on the article saw a story about a 43% raise. Based on the headline alone, a correction should be appended to the online article. No such luck. It’s worth noting that the URL for the story also changed, from:

http://www.thestar.com/news/article/1120332–whitchurch-stouffville-council-votes-itself-43-per-cent-raise?bn=1

to:

http://www.thestar.com/news/article/1120332–whitchurch-stouffville-councillors-back-down-on-massive-pay-raise?bn=1

Both URLs currently take you to the same version of the story, but that’s only because to the Star‘s chosen content management system, this is also a valid link to the story:

http://www.thestar.com/FakeNews/article/1120332–the-toronto-star-cant-get-its-story-straight?bn=1

A lot of minor corrections are fixed silently and go unnoticed, but an error on this scale requires some sort of acknowledgement.

I’ve written an email to the Star‘s public editor, Kathy English, in the hope that this kind of situation may be addressed in the future.

Use your nodle

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Chicken nodle soup

Call me what you will, but I don’t think that expecting properly spelled food labels in the local Sobeys is asking for too much.  Everybody makes mistakes (guilty!), but is it really possible that no employees or managers noticed this label all day long yesterday? Or is it more likely that the staff noticed but just didn’t care enough to fix it? Either way, it doesn’t exactly give me confidence that Sobeys treats my food with any greater care than, say, the local Loblaws.

East Yark's favarite pizza shap

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East Yark Pizza Shap

I can’t help but channel my best Fargo accent whenever I read the location on this pizzeria’s flyer.

As funny a mistake as that is (and as much fun as it is to say “East Yark” over and over and over again), the sad part is that an earnest businessperson is probably losing a significant chunk of potential business from people who think that if you can’t take the time to spell-check the name of your neighbourhood, you can’t be putting much care or attention into cooking pizzas either.

My mother mused for a while about starting a side business doing nothing but quick proofreading of flyers and brochures for local businesses before they get printed and distributed with howlers of mistakes on them. For a few bucks, she’d make any necessary corrections before releasing the work to the printer. She got started by correcting flyers that she received and sending them back to the offending business along with a business card and a brochure of her own. She eventually gave up after getting no responses and continuing to receive misspelled flyers months after she sent in her free corrections. But there must be a viable business in here somewhere, even if only for a printer who looks at the client’s copy and says, “Hey, wait a sec…” instead of just shrugging and starting the press.