Oh, you just have to feel sorry for new Coloradoan editor Josh Awtry. He moved to Fort Collins just a couple of months ago and he worked on much of Wednesday’s centerpiece himself, he writes on his Facebook page.
It’s a fine centerpiece, too: A look at the nutritional content of a typical school lunch.
Just one little problem with it. Somewhere along the line, this happened:
Cantelope? What’s cantelope? Is that when you tell a young person they can’t run off and get married?
The word they were looking for, of course, is Cantaloupe. Misspelling cantaloupe is one way to produce an error. (See what I did there?)
Your copy desk pulls up a story on the screen and edits it — more than once, most likely. The lesson here for all of us: It’s important to make sure that same staffer gets a hard copy of the graphic as well. And it’s important that the words in our graphics get very close scrutiny. Especially when the size and boldness of the text and the white space around them helps those words jump out at you even more.
Thanks to my sharp-eyed but anonymous tipster.
And my thanks to Josh. Whose work I admire greatly and have written about many times, here in the blog. The second lesson here might be: This can happen to any of us.
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You know who else needs a copy editor?
Local TV news operations. Chicago’s WMAQ-TV in particular. And Harrisburg’s Fox43 TV news. And Local 15 News in Mobile, Ala. And WBAL-TV in Baltimore. And Fox2Now in St. Louis. And KTLA channel 5 in Los Angeles. And Charlotte’s WBTV. And KXAN-TV of Austin. And Huntsville’s WAFF-TV. And other local TV news operations. And CBS local media. And the web operation for DC101 radio. And the Huffington Post. And CNN (and CNN again)(and yet again) and CNN Money and CNN mobile and Fox News (and Fox News again)(and Fox News yet again)(and again!)(and again!)(and yet again!) and ABC News and the BBC and German news channel N24. And Fairfax media of New Zealand. And Dagsrevyen, the evening news broadcast of the Norwegian Broadcasting Corp. And Martha Stewart’s TV operation. And the Disney Channel. And creators of mobile apps. And Yahoo News. And Google News’ ‘bots. And Baseball jersey manufacturers. And Georgetown University. And Kansas State University. And the University of Iowa. And the New York Jets, the Minnesota Vikings, the St. Louis Cardinals and the Washington Nationals (boy, do they need a copy editor). And the National Hockey League. And ESPN (and ESPN again)(and yet again)(and yet again)(and three more times!)(and yet again) and Fox Sports (and Fox Sports again). And college athletic department ticket offices. And the Virginia general assembly. And college alumni magazines. And pharmacies. And the makers of Sudafed. And Borders bookstore. And the U.S. Postal Service. And government agencies and political candidates. And Tea Party candidates. And the Newt Gingrich campaign. And the White House. And the Vice President. And city and county Boards of Elections. Both the state of Pennsylvania and its department of transportation. And Costa Cruises. And Pittsburgh skywriters. And road paving contractors in Durham, N.C. and in New York City. And the city of Norfolk, Va. And the Ohio Dept. of Transportation. And the West Palm Beach, Fla., police dept. And South African traffic cops. And gas stations. And billboard companies. And bumper sticker manufacturers. And sign painters. And Home Depot and manufacturers of “hoodies.†And T-shirt designers. And more T-shirt designers. And Old Navy. And Adidas. And rubber stamp designers. And glass etchers. And Starbucks. And restaurants, breakfast joints, Chinese restaurants and cake decorators. And more cake decorators. And drive-in movie theater managers. And romance novelists. And Capcom, the makers of Resident Evil video games. And American Idol. And South Africa’s New Age and Sunday Independent newspapers. And Dublin’s Sunday Business Post. And the Echo of Gloucestershire, England. And the South China Morning Post. And the Washington Post (Hey! Another repeat offender!), the Post‘s Express tab (Hey! Yet another repeat offender!), the Washington Examiner, the New York Times (Wow! Yet another repeat offender!)(Hey! A third offense!), the New York Post, Wall Street Journal Europe, Newsday, USA Today, the Chicago Sun-Times (And yet another!), the Daily Herald of Arlington Heights, Ill., the Rochester, N.Y., Democrat & Chronicle, the Daily Mail of London, the Seattle Times, the weekly Manila Mail of San Francisco, the Miami Herald (and again!), the Portland Oregonian, the Durham, N.C., Herald-Sun, the Chapel Hill, N.C., News, the Missoula, Mont., Missoulian, the Duluth, Minn., News Tribune, the Springfield (Mass.) Republican, the Times-Record of Denton, Md., the News-Herald of Willoughby, Ohio, the Amarillo (Texas) Globe News, the Laredo Morning Times, the Cincinnati Enquirer, the Waynesboro News Virginian, the Virginian-Pilot, the Des Moines Register, the Green Bay Press-Gazette, Gannett’s N.Y. Central Media hub, the Greenville (S.C.) News, the Daily Herald of Provo, Utah, the Deseret News of Salt Lake City, the Salt Lake Tribune, the Carbondale, Ill., Southern Illinoisian, the Lakeland (Fla.) Ledger (Hey! Yet another repeat offender!) and the Canarsie Courier of New York City. And Politico. And the Associated Press. And the Associated Press again. And Mann’s Jeweler’s Accent magazine. And New Scientist magazine. And Investment News magazine. And Time magazine.
