Online Style Guide Needed

"Newspapers ought to be one of the bastions of literacy, and reporters and editors ought to be at pains to shun corruptions and commonplace errors that may be excusable from others."

— The London Free Press Style Guide

Newspapers are in trouble. At least, when it comes to quality. I have an idea on how to improve the product, sponsor an online style guide.

At one time The London Free Press, like many publications, published it own in-house style guide. It came in a little binder filled with hole-punched, printed pages. This book form made updating quick and easy.

When the old style guide was used in conjunction with The Canadian Oxford Dictionary, a reporter or photographer or editor had a two great resources immediately at hand. The paper has stopped producing the style guide and Oxford has shut down their unique, Canadian operation.

Maybe it is time for The London Free Press to approach Sun Media and Quebecor Media and encourage the production of a company-wide, online, style guide. The guide could offer read only access to everyone, including readers, but changes to the guide would be carefully controlled. An online suggestion box would be nice. Let users of the guide suggest changes and additions just as editorial staff were once encouraged to submit new entries, corrections or changes to the members of the Style Guide committee.

Newspapers realized that "consistency must go hand in hand with accuracy" in order to maintain the complete confidence of readers. The Free Press guide points out that "dictionaries are diagnostic; the Style Guide is prescriptive. Dictionaries report how words are used by the majority, no matter whether well or ill; the Style Guide specifies how they are to be used in The Free Press, and insists on correctness."

Let me share with you a few of the entries from my copy of The London Free Press Style Guide:

accepted a position is a trite expression frequently found in business announcements. More often, a person applies for a position and the company does the accepting.

a.m., p.m. (lower case): 2 p.m. EDT; 2:30 a.m. EST. The terms a.m. and p.m. are redundant in connection with noon or midnight. They mean ante meridiem and post meridiem, whereas the sun is exactly opposite the meridiem at midnight and over it at noon.

billion (1,000,000,000), million (1,000,000). It is $4.3 billion; four billion people. A billion in Canadian usage means a thousand million. In Europe, a billion is a million million, but don't worry about the conversion; it's done by the wire services.

cement. Don't use cement when you mean concrete. Cement is the powdery substance used in making concrete. It's a concrete block, concrete abutment, concrete sidewalk. Workmen pour concrete, not cement, when they're building foundations. Concrete is a mixture of cement, sand, gravel and water. But cement mixer.

It is important to get Sun Media and Quebecor on-board when it comes to this project. It might prevent the following which appeared in The Free Press after being moved to the paper by the QMI Agency: "The Jeep . . . slammed through the cement foundation of the bungalow."

doctors fought to save. Avoid.

doughnut (never donut except when required in company names)

e.g. (means exempli gratia). Avoid, use "for example."

Today the paper not only uses e.g., but uses it incorrectly. The following is from the paper's online Email Alerts page: "Eg. Breaking news, News, Sports, Entertainment." Eg.?

Note e-mail is spelled one way at the top of the page and another way in the body of the text. Talk about the need for a style guide. Also note how the writer has failed to capitalize all the words in the name of the paper. The London Free Press name is capitalized incorrectly online. Ouch! (See below.)

the. It's capitalized in all nominative references to our own newspaper . . . The London Free Press.

till, until. The two are equally correct. The original form, till, is more common, but its expanded variation, until, is often preferred in phrases or clauses preceding the main clause. (We're not going home till the press club closes, but Until it closes, we're not budging.). 'Til, which would be a contraction of an expansion, is nonsense. Up to is acceptable, but not up until.

zero, zeros (not zeroes).

When I saw the above, I groaned. I've made that mistake all too often and I'm sure I've seen it in print. A quick check turned up lots of examples of the word zeroes in print. It turns out that "his paycheque has a few more zeroes than mine" is incorrect. The Style Guide is correct; The plural of the noun is zeros.

But there is also a verb "to zero." "The NDP zeroes in on a vulnerable Liberal seat" is correct. This time zero is a verb.

 Auugghhhh!

Are those working in the media professionals?

There was an interesting story in my local paper — The London Free Press. It seems a man was arrested, charged and found guilty of obstructing police after he got too close to the action while shooting pictures. London police were arresting a drunk on a downtown London street and Ireneusz Janiszewski thought, incorrectly it turns out, that he could go anywhere he pleased to get a picture of the arrest. Since all was occurring on a public sidewalk, he thought he was free to shoot from any vantage point, even if it involved disobeying a direct police order.

The man said he was a photojournalist: An interesting assertion which the reporter did not seem to take seriously. A quick reading of the newspaper's stories might leave one thinking Janiszewski was a photo buff or wannabe shutterbug. At best, one might think of the shooter as an "aspiring photojournalist."

Despite the reporter's unease at applying the term photojournalist to the accused, the headline writer for the second story bravely called a spade a spade, or in this case a photojournalist a photojournalist.

I think the reason for the tone of the news story was that newspaper folk are very protective of their turf. They like to refer to themselves as professionals despite the fact it does not take a special degree to do their work. (In fact, an America District Judge ruled in 1993 that newspaper reporters and photographers are not professionals as defined by U.S. federal labour law.)

Name of accused spelled two ways

Maybe, just maybe, if newspaper folk were professionals some of the most egregious errors would not appear in print. For instance, the charged man's name was spelled two ways in two stories in The Free Press.

Variety is not the spice of life in a news story, and unfortunately this story had way too much variety. A headline tells us "photojournalist given unconditional discharge" but the story tells us "he was granted a conditional discharge."

If news reporting was a profession, there would be standards. Spelling errors in names and other incorrectly reported stuff might be corrected. But days after mistakes are made, they often remain on the newspaper website. In the past, I have drawn the attention of reporters and editors to errors in posted copy. Sometimes the slip-ups are corrected — sometimes not. There is clearly no policy and this is not a hallmark of professionalism.

I worked for more than four decades in the newspaper field. In the early years I never heard the term photojournalist applied to newspaper shooters. We were simply staff photographers. When a reporter or editor needed art to illustrate a story, a photographer was given an assignment sheet detailing what was expected.

It may surprise you to know than most photographers with National Geographic did not major in photography but they have college degrees in a variety of disciplines: journalism, anthropology, sociology or psychology, fine arts, and sciences.

When I worked at The Sault Daily Star, the folk doing the hiring had an unwritten policy against hiring anyone with a journalism degree. Shortly after I was hired, a young man with a BA in English from the University of Windsor was hired as a cub reporter. With writing skills and an understanding of spelling and grammar he was preferred over a journalism graduate from Carlton University. It seems the grads from Ottawa came complete with a professional attitude that had to be dismantled.

That young man went on to become an excellent reporter and one of the best editors I have known. He has a very inquisitive mind. He is now retired but in the entire course of his career he never pulled some of the conceit-driven stunts pulled by some of the journalism grads I have worked with.

Some years ago I covered a fuel spill on Oxford Street East. The police stopped The Free Press reporter and me from getting too close to the scene. They claimed it was too dangerous. Yet, we could see police officers near the spill walking about without masks, quietly chatting with each other. The reporter, a journalism student working at the paper for the summer, was incensed. She argued angrily with the police. Finally, the officer in charge came over and in a fit of uncontrolled pique she told him to "Fuck off!" She was escorted to her car.

Thinking of that student, that professional reporter to be, and comparing her to that photojournalist wannabe convicted of obstructing a London police officer, I think I see some similarities.

_______________________________________________________________________________

Addendum:

1: For another look at the question of what is a photojournalist, check out this earlier post: Who's a photojournalist?

In truth, all too often newspapers use photographs to fill holes and to visually support for their stories. This type of newspaper editorial photography has more in common with advertising bumph than journalism.

When The London Free Press ran a story claiming men who buy sex commit more crimes, the piece ran with a stock photo. The rough dude in the photo and the cigarette smoking hooker were models and the photo came from a stock photo agency.

It must be pointed out that The Free Press owned up to this use of stock photography. They credited the source of their photo as Shutterstock. An observant reader would have realized this was not photojournalism.

2: What were the two spellings of Janiszewski's name? Well, in an earlier story his first name is Ireneusz. In the later story an "e" is dropped and he is Irenusz. 

3: The story tells us the incident occurred "near the northwest entrance of CitiPlaza (sic) at King and Wellington streets." The King and Wellington intersection is found on the east side of Citi Plaza.

I write CitiPlaza (sic) because I took pictures at the plaza some time ago and was told the correct spelling was two words and given a business card to prove it. The plaza's website still spells the name Citi Plaza. Why does The Free Press want to be cute? (This is not the first time that I have seen this in the local paper.)

4: I'm not an editor, as evident in this piece; I need an editor. That said, almost everyone could use a good editor. Our newspapers, staffed with professionals, do not see it this way. Thus, we see stuff like the following: "He was granted a conditional discharge with 12 months' probation." Note that months is simply plural; It should not be possessive. A good editor would have caught this and corrected it before it went in the daily paper and onto the Web.

5: And what exactly does it mean that the erstwhile photojournalist, he may not be doing too much photojournalism in the future, was given a conditional discharge? The paper tell us, "A discharge keeps him from acquiring a criminal record."

London Police Service sees it differently. They write on the Web: "A discharge is a criminal record for the life of the discharge (although it is not a record of “conviction.”) It is all a little confusing but what is clear is that in the end those given a discharge must request the destruction of the record. London Police Services will do this when asked but not all police forces.

My guess, and it is just a guess, is that the reason the photographer and his lawyer turned down the offer of a discharge before the case reached the courts was that they believed they would be able to win the case, beat the charge, and the photographer would walk cleanly away from the legal mess. He didn't want a discharge if he could avoid it.

I know someone who was given a type of discharge and in the short term it caused them lots of problems.

New car blues

"So, how do you like the Jetta?" My wife quickly replied that she hadn't formed an opinion; We had just driven the new car off the lot not five minutes earlier. And now we were stopped, pulled over in front of a furniture store and chatting with the fellow who had just rear-ended us.

That's right, we had not traveled five kilometres before the blush of new was banished from our baby, our new Jetta TDI.

The damage was slight: A small arced dimple from a top edge of a licence plate holder, plus a line of small indentations. Also, the impact had pushed the bumper slightly out of alignment.

The blue wedge is the misaligned bumper reflecting clear sky.

The repair will cost a little more than $400 and the fellow who hit us is picking up the tab.

This post marks the first of a series of posts that will look at the Volkswagen Jetta TDI and our feelings about our Mexican made car showing German roots.

To get an idea of the cost, go to the Volkswagen Canada website, click on Build and Price and then click on Jetta. The Jetta was simplified in 2011. Some say cheapened. The changes are most noticeable in the hard, black plastic found everywhere inside. Many are saying that the Jetta no longer has any claim to being a luxury car because of the cheapened interior. I'm not going to be so quick to damn my new car.

Before settling on the Jetta, I looked at the hybrid Lexus CT200h and the Toyota Prius. The Lexus fell from favour as it had a very long delivery time. The earthquake and tsunami affecting Japan were blamed. The Prius fell from favour for similar reasons. (Also, my wife dislikes the Prius look.) The Jetta came from behind to be chosen based on fuel economy (60 mpg or better cruising down the freeway), technical sophistication (a clean diesel engine putting out 237 ft/lbs of torque) and a six speed/five speed automatic transmission. There's more but we'll get to all that in a later post.

The deal maker was the trade-in value assigned to my aging 2003 Ford Focus. The value given was four times greater than that offered by the other Volkswagen dealer in town. The excellent trade-in brought the monthly payments down to $304 with one caveat: When the 60 month loan period is up, there will still be a balloon payment outstanding of about $7900.

Two other little financial perks applied to the Jetta: The first oil change and suggested maintenance visit does not occur until 15,000 kms and the annual bill from my insurer for the Jetta is less than what they quoted me for insuring a top-of-the-line Honda Civic.

Sunday my wife and I may drive to Burlington to a Morgan club meeting. We'll take the Jetta and report on the fuel mileage delivered by our new car.

Cheers!

Two editorials, two views

The London Free Press and many other Sun Media/Quebecor Media papers carried this editorial by Ezra Levant on the Alberta tar sands: Putting a new face on the oilsands. The right say oilsands; The left say tar sands; Levant says ethical oil.

The New York Times carried this editorial today: Profits before environment. According to the American paper: Tar sands production creates three times as many greenhouse gases as does conventional oil.

The dispute over the soundness of the tar sands development has turned ugly. It wasn't a big turn. The tar sands are an environmental disaster like so many of the things that we do for energy to support our unsupportable-in-the-long-run way of life.

Levant calls his opponents anti-oilsands agitators spreading anti-oilsands lies and propaganda. The Free Press editorial writer claims: "The chief criticism of the oilsands is esthetic: Open-pit mines just don't look pretty." Now it appears to be Levant who is lying.

A little, very little, googling will quickly show opposition to the tar sands and to the new pipeline is because many Native Canadians see the tar sands development as causing "environmental devastation." This is not an esthetic problem.

Questionable information not questioned

Someday I will write about a psychic story on which I worked while at The London Free Press. It was a good story but all of it was bunkum. The paper ran the story because it was a fun, good read. Period. No one was concerned that it was totally false. (To many readers, stories like that one make the newspaper staff look like fools.)

Error filled stories weaken the brand. This is a fact. Studies have found that newspapers do a great disservice to themselves and to their industry when they run stuff clearly, and accurately, seen as erroneous by many.

Today, under the headline 'Weird' science, The Free Press promoted the return of William Shatner's Weird or What? on the History channel. (History channel? I don't think so. Often there is no history in the history that is presented here.)

Bill Harris asks in his Sun Media television column, quoting William Shatner, "What is a crystal skull doing buried in prehistoric times?" The answer to the question is: They are fakes. British Museum and Smithsonian skulls were conclusively determined to be fakes carved with relatively modern equipment.

When I think of the story on which I worked those many years ago, I hang my head in shame. Running stuff like that, printing bunkum as fact as Harris is doing this weekend, does nothing to further the reader's understanding of our world, of science.

If you are interested in knowing a little more about the myth of the crystal skulls, check out this article from Archaeology magazine. It carries more weight than the stuff being run by the History Channel and being reported by Sun Media.

Obama, Sarah Palin something in common

It's a fast moving political brush fire flaming across the American media landscape. President Obama's black, Darth Vader bus is Canadian made. A real shocker? I don't think so.

Was this a big scoop for the New York Post? Again, I don't think so. The Obama's bus is from Hemphill Brothers Coach of Tennessee. Using a bus from these good old Southern boys puts the president in the company of other political notables such as: George W. Bush, John McCain, Fred Thompson, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Rudy Guiliani, and my personal favourite user of Hemphill coaches — Sarah Palin.

An article two years ago in the Bastrop Daily Enterprise by Wes Helbling about Joey and Trent Hemphill, owner/founders of Hemphill Coach of Tennessee, reported:

Perhaps their most famous client to date has been former President George W. Bush. Trent said during the 2000 presidential primaries, a network was using their buses to interview candidates.


“The governor’s office called us, and we provided buses for him during the primaries,” said Trent. “We picked him up and took him to Austin on election night.”

The brothers were later invited to Bush’s first inauguration. The president called them again for buses during his 2004 re-election campaign. It was an unusual request, as presidents do not normally use private transportation services.

“The Secret Service armored all of the vehicles,” said Trent. “They were on the coaches 24 hours a day.”

As one might imagine, “There are a lot of logistics involved.”

Trent recalls getting a call on his cell phone from Air Force One. The reception was bad because Air Force One was flying over Iceland at the time.

The brothers were invited to a private Christmas party at the White House last December. During the final days of the Bush administration, the president sent them each a letter of thanks.

“No matter what your politics are, it was a real honor for the president to use our buses,” said Joey.

New Prevost coaches are delivered to the Hemphill Tennessee conversions facility with nothing more than a plywood floor and a driver's seat, according to information posted on a company site. This agrees with what ABC News learned from Christine Garant of Prevost, "We just make the shell. We don't know anything about the end user." Prevost's Steve Zeigler agreed, telling ABC News, "We just build an empty shell of a bus, and then sell them to a converter for outfitting,"

American craftspeople in Tennessee custom-build every wall, cabinet and piece of furniture in a Hemphill coach. Adjacent to and upstairs from the main conversion shop, there is a complete woodfinishing and upholstery shop. Many of the parts that go into a Prevost coach come from the States. The Quebec builder brags that it uses Volvo engines. Volvo engines are made in Hagerstown, Maryland.

If you are wondering whether or not the White House could have been supplied with totally American made coaches, ABC News reports:

The only U.S.-headquartered coach manufacturer, Motor Coach Industries, based in Schamburg, Ill., also builds the country's only "buy American compliant" coach, the majority of whose parts are made here, an MCI spokeswoman said. Note the red flag words: "the majority of whose parts are made here." All parts are not made here.

ABC News fails to point out that MCI also produces buses in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada and has for decades. It's roots in Canada go back to the Dirty Thirties and 1933.

Prevost coach shells are made in Canada but are finished in plants across the United States. A great number of skilled Americans, from Florida to Oregon and points in between, are employed completing these vehicles before delivery to their American buyers.

This story may be the Jon Stewart moment of the day.

Federal Tories threaten legal action against Quebec widow

According to a story from Canadian Press:

"The federal Conservative party has sent a threatening email to the widow of an asbestos victim in the latest chapter of Canada's debate over the hazardous mineral."

Michaela Keyserlingk's husband, Robert, died in 2009 of mesothelioma — a rare form of cancer. How rare is it? Well, there are probably no more than 3000 cases diagnosed in the entire United States annually. But Robert Keyerlingk was not unlucky; Robert Keryserlingk was an asbestos worker.

Asbestos workers are at the highest risk for developing mesothelioma. According to the Mesothelioma Website: "One study of asbestos insulation workers reports a mesothelioma death rate up to 344 times higher than the general population."

Asbestos is no longer mined in the United States and it's use is banned in many developed countries, including New Zealand, Australia and all European Union countries. But Canada continues to support the controlled use of a mineral the World Health Organization has labelled a carcinogenic.

CBC reports:

"The Canadian government fought to keep asbestos off a U.N. - sponsored list of dangerous substances. If included on the list, called the Rotterdam Convention, any country looking to import asbestos would be informed of all the potential risks and would have to agree in advance to accept any shipments."

Why would Canada take such a position, you may well wonder. The answer appears to be quite simple: Quebec is the fourth largest producer of chrysotile asbestos in the world, earning the province over $100 million a year. It has also earned Quebec the unwanted distinction of having one of the highest rates of mesothelioma on earth.

With her husband dead, Michaela Keyserlingk launched a Website to warn other Canadians about the danger posed by asbestos and to publicize the hard-to-defend stance of government in Canada which continue to support the mining and exporting of a substance even the parliament buildings are having removed.

So why are the federal Tories threatening Keyserlingk with legal action? She used the party logo on her site. They want the logo removed. The feisty widow is refusing.

This started me wondering: How many other sites are posting the federal PC log. A quick Google search turned up the following links. And not all the links are positive, as it will quickly become clear. If the PCs want to threaten folk, drag 'em into court, maybe the PCs should enlarge their net. They might make quite a haul.

Bacon and Brains - "The Conservative Party currently hails out of the mythical land of Alberta, where their dark presence cast a long shadow across the whole of the Canadian prairies, some of BC, Ontario and Quebec City."
Canadian Immigration Newsletter - "Don't let policy changes catch you by surprise - stay current on the latest breaking news on Canadian Immigration!"
630 CHED - "A Liberal MP is alleging that `crass politics' have resulted in a Canadian Olympic retail logo that mirrors the federal Conservative party logo."
Voices-Voix Coalition - "As part of its platform for the 2006 federal election campaign, the Conservative Party of Canada promised greater transparency for Canadians in their access to information. Read about what the Conservatives promised Canadians."
Batshite - "The results of the Canadian federal election in May pleased some–seniors, for instance–but disappointed others–such as "modernists, women, young people, immigrants [and] people fond of evidence-based policy."

As you can see, there are oodles and oodles of sites posting the PC logo. I would add it to this blog but I don't need the possible hassle. But, my guess is that using the PC logo in an editorial context is quite legal. Check the next link to see my favourite use of the sacred symbol.

Anything But Conservative - "Could the democracy that Canadians take for granted by at risk if the Harper Conservatives get a majority? . . . in a Harper democracy, students will be discouraged from voting – in fact, this government has Elections Canada so terrified that they are ordering returning officers to stop special ballots for students . . . "

So, now the PCs are threatening a widow. Nice.