This one was too good to let slip by:
In Tuesday's Herald-Press, the top story concerned Huntington possibly getting a high-speed fiber optic system in the next couple of years, written by Jennifer (If That Is Your Real Name) Kannon.
Jennifer seemed to be searching for a word, and couldn't quite get it nailed down.
"We will be (installing) cables all the way to the customer premise which will be serving all of Huntington.”
The basic premise is that "premise" is not correct.
Try again.
"We'll be doing a complete construction project in Huntington and then once the consumer signs up we take the fiber all the way to the preemies."
Wow. You know, you can almost forgive the first one until you see the second one.
How many premature babies actually need high-speed Internet or watch cable?
But we're glad the company is offering that option.
Just for the record, the missing word is "premises," which is not a very good word to use in that situation. "House" would have been a better choice. And easier to spell, presumably.
But thanks for playing, Jennifer. Please accept these parting gifts before you leave town. Soon.
On a side note, there was a sports teaser on page one about the Huntington North swim meet, which was called a "duel" meet. Backstroke at 10 paces, anyone?
Again, the correct word is "dual."
Wednesday, February 11, 2009
Tuesday, February 10, 2009
Regifted: New look, but same old product inside
It's been a while since we've been here, and to tell you the truth, we've just been weary.
We've had Kathy Branham becoming the first female to sit on a Huntington County Commissioner.
There have been incoherent stories that have taken three reporters to write.
Other stories have been botched, including the initial Mike Snelling debacle, when no one from the Herald-Press showed up for a public Commissioners' vote, then seemed indignant when the Commissioners refused to let tell the newspaper what the vote was. (Duh, show up for the vote!)
We've been fed plenty of news from Marion, Wabash and Peru, including one day when there were no stories from Huntington County, but a full front page of Grant County news.
The recent heavy snow and ice storms caused states of emergency in Huntington County. People went to shelters for days. Others were without power and tried to survive in sub-zero temperatures in their own homes. It barely earned a mention in the Herald-Press. Only when a press release was received from the power company did the paper have anything in, and then the reporter didn't even make a call to local authorities to see how the city and county were handling the emergency. That's not just laziness, that's just plain ignorance.
Obituaries ... it's not even worth discussing. It used to be you only hoped they spelled your name correctly when you die. Now it seems they can't even get the right name with the right obituary. They're disasters.
We didn't even touch on the whole episode with Mayor Steve Updike and his "Taliban" comments. The reporting was completely bungled, prompting corrections, clarifications, mea culpas and perhaps a doctor's note claiming the Herald-Press was ill that day.
Most recently, the paper completely missed a huge story when the Department of Corrections erroneously sent out calls to people in Huntington County saying certain prisoners were being released. Well, we can't say they completely missed the story. A week after it happened, the Herald-Press ran an Associated Press story saying that people in Kokomo had gotten calls.
Geez, it was in the Journal-Gazette the next day, with quotes from Huntington County prosecutor Amy Richison. Is anyone at the H-P even paying attention?
There was also more horrible reporting on the recent e-mail scandal at the Courthouse. Trying to make heads-or-tails out of the stories in the Herald-Press was mind-spinning. Oh, and the reporting was also a couple days late. No big surprise there.
But we guess they've been pacing themselves waiting for the new editor, who was just recently hired.
Rebecca Sandlin comes on board, bringing a wealth of experience ... well, if you call about three years of police-beat reporting a wealth of experience. She did serve as managing editor of a restarted paper in Noblesville - for a month from October to November of last year. No word on why she left that paper or what she did in the two months before she was hired at the H-P.
We guess she was working on making her own jewelry, which she apparently markets on the Internet and in some trinket shops in downstate. We'll take a crystal unicorn, thank you.
Really, at least Tom Davis had some newspaper managerial experience - for all that was worth.
So we waited breathlessly for the promised all-new Herald-Press, which made its debut on Tuesday.
We got a new-look paper, and really, it doesn't look too bad. It's an improvement from the Tom Davis-designed disaster.
But there was something familiar about the new look - oh yeah, it's a clone of the Marion Chronicle-Tribune. No surprise there. Marion is the worldwide headquarters of Paxton's Central Indiana newspaper fiefdom that also includes Huntington, Wabash, Peru and Frankfort.
In fact, the people at Marion have been handling design duties for the Herald-Press, so it's no surprise that they look the same.
A giveaway was that one of the sports pages had a folio line with the "Chronicle-Tribune" name on it.
So while the paper had a better look, the reporting was still abysmal.
Also, the type size has been reduced and squeezed some much that even people with 20/20 vision will need a magnifying glass to read it.
The flashy new look is still not enough to make us want to pick it up.
We don't hold out much hope for this new incarnation the Herald-Press.
- The same reporters who couldn't get the job done before are still fumbling through.
- A new editor with an unbelievably-thin resume was brought in to right the ship and guide an equally-inexperienced staff.
- Many of the basic functions of the paper are now being handled in Marion.
- Stories are still be missed or misreported. There is so much going on in Huntington County that hasn't been reported on that it's inexcusable.
- Run-of-the-mill press releases, grip-and-grin photos, ribbon-cuttings, free dentist days, and any other manner of ho-hum non-stories are continually passed off on the front page as breaking news while important local goings-on in government, police, etc., are overlooked or missed completely, and state and national events are flat-out ignored.
- All the while, the TAB, under the leadership of former H-P staffer Cindy Klepper, is grabbing all the advertising in Huntington County, and with the addition of the new TAB website, is cleaning up on cornering the news as well.
The Herald-Press is not so much a newspaper as it is a bulletin board for anyone handing out an over-sized check.
If a reporter would even step outside the doors of the Herald-Press, they'd find there's a bustling little community out here, with a lot of important news going on.
Newswriting is more than retyping a press release. Reporting involves going out and gathering information, and then having the ability to craft that information into a story.
The people (we can't even bring ourselves to call them reporters anymore) at the Herald-Press can do neither. They don't gather the information, and can't put together a coherent story. Maybe it's not all their fault. They're inexperienced and have no one to train them. A good editor teaches as well as edits, but again, none of that is happening at the Herald-Press, and the new editor doesn't seem to have enough experience to do that, either.
But Paxton Media doesn't seem to have much choice. If this is the best editor they could find ... (maybe she was the only choice they had) it's hard to believe she was the cream of whatever crop they had to pick from.
It's all going to be moot, anyway. The redesign is just the next step into making the Herald-Press an extension of the Chronicle-Tribune. In a way, it already is. National pages, "Home and Garden" pages, are all put together in Marion. No one in Huntington sees those pages. The brain trust in Marion is already making editorial decisions for the readers in Huntington.
All the Herald-Press newsroom does is try and write stories and take some photos. They send them to Marion where it's all packaged. All the advertising is handled in Marion as well.
In essence, the Herald-Press is the Huntington edition of the Chronicle-Tribune.
Newspapers everywhere in this country are disappearing.
For all practical purposes, the Herald-Press is gone, and empty shell with a new coat of paint slapped on.
So who will tell the stories that need to be told in Huntington County? The Journal-Gazette will cover the biggest stories. There is hope that the TAB will continue to grow and at least give us important news on a weekly basis.
And without a watchdog, who is going to tell us when Steve Updike compares people to terrorists?
We've had Kathy Branham becoming the first female to sit on a Huntington County Commissioner.
There have been incoherent stories that have taken three reporters to write.
Other stories have been botched, including the initial Mike Snelling debacle, when no one from the Herald-Press showed up for a public Commissioners' vote, then seemed indignant when the Commissioners refused to let tell the newspaper what the vote was. (Duh, show up for the vote!)
We've been fed plenty of news from Marion, Wabash and Peru, including one day when there were no stories from Huntington County, but a full front page of Grant County news.
The recent heavy snow and ice storms caused states of emergency in Huntington County. People went to shelters for days. Others were without power and tried to survive in sub-zero temperatures in their own homes. It barely earned a mention in the Herald-Press. Only when a press release was received from the power company did the paper have anything in, and then the reporter didn't even make a call to local authorities to see how the city and county were handling the emergency. That's not just laziness, that's just plain ignorance.
Obituaries ... it's not even worth discussing. It used to be you only hoped they spelled your name correctly when you die. Now it seems they can't even get the right name with the right obituary. They're disasters.
We didn't even touch on the whole episode with Mayor Steve Updike and his "Taliban" comments. The reporting was completely bungled, prompting corrections, clarifications, mea culpas and perhaps a doctor's note claiming the Herald-Press was ill that day.
Most recently, the paper completely missed a huge story when the Department of Corrections erroneously sent out calls to people in Huntington County saying certain prisoners were being released. Well, we can't say they completely missed the story. A week after it happened, the Herald-Press ran an Associated Press story saying that people in Kokomo had gotten calls.
Geez, it was in the Journal-Gazette the next day, with quotes from Huntington County prosecutor Amy Richison. Is anyone at the H-P even paying attention?
There was also more horrible reporting on the recent e-mail scandal at the Courthouse. Trying to make heads-or-tails out of the stories in the Herald-Press was mind-spinning. Oh, and the reporting was also a couple days late. No big surprise there.
But we guess they've been pacing themselves waiting for the new editor, who was just recently hired.
Rebecca Sandlin comes on board, bringing a wealth of experience ... well, if you call about three years of police-beat reporting a wealth of experience. She did serve as managing editor of a restarted paper in Noblesville - for a month from October to November of last year. No word on why she left that paper or what she did in the two months before she was hired at the H-P.
We guess she was working on making her own jewelry, which she apparently markets on the Internet and in some trinket shops in downstate. We'll take a crystal unicorn, thank you.
Really, at least Tom Davis had some newspaper managerial experience - for all that was worth.
So we waited breathlessly for the promised all-new Herald-Press, which made its debut on Tuesday.
We got a new-look paper, and really, it doesn't look too bad. It's an improvement from the Tom Davis-designed disaster.
But there was something familiar about the new look - oh yeah, it's a clone of the Marion Chronicle-Tribune. No surprise there. Marion is the worldwide headquarters of Paxton's Central Indiana newspaper fiefdom that also includes Huntington, Wabash, Peru and Frankfort.
In fact, the people at Marion have been handling design duties for the Herald-Press, so it's no surprise that they look the same.
A giveaway was that one of the sports pages had a folio line with the "Chronicle-Tribune" name on it.
So while the paper had a better look, the reporting was still abysmal.
Also, the type size has been reduced and squeezed some much that even people with 20/20 vision will need a magnifying glass to read it.
The flashy new look is still not enough to make us want to pick it up.
We don't hold out much hope for this new incarnation the Herald-Press.
- The same reporters who couldn't get the job done before are still fumbling through.
- A new editor with an unbelievably-thin resume was brought in to right the ship and guide an equally-inexperienced staff.
- Many of the basic functions of the paper are now being handled in Marion.
- Stories are still be missed or misreported. There is so much going on in Huntington County that hasn't been reported on that it's inexcusable.
- Run-of-the-mill press releases, grip-and-grin photos, ribbon-cuttings, free dentist days, and any other manner of ho-hum non-stories are continually passed off on the front page as breaking news while important local goings-on in government, police, etc., are overlooked or missed completely, and state and national events are flat-out ignored.
- All the while, the TAB, under the leadership of former H-P staffer Cindy Klepper, is grabbing all the advertising in Huntington County, and with the addition of the new TAB website, is cleaning up on cornering the news as well.
The Herald-Press is not so much a newspaper as it is a bulletin board for anyone handing out an over-sized check.
If a reporter would even step outside the doors of the Herald-Press, they'd find there's a bustling little community out here, with a lot of important news going on.
Newswriting is more than retyping a press release. Reporting involves going out and gathering information, and then having the ability to craft that information into a story.
The people (we can't even bring ourselves to call them reporters anymore) at the Herald-Press can do neither. They don't gather the information, and can't put together a coherent story. Maybe it's not all their fault. They're inexperienced and have no one to train them. A good editor teaches as well as edits, but again, none of that is happening at the Herald-Press, and the new editor doesn't seem to have enough experience to do that, either.
But Paxton Media doesn't seem to have much choice. If this is the best editor they could find ... (maybe she was the only choice they had) it's hard to believe she was the cream of whatever crop they had to pick from.
It's all going to be moot, anyway. The redesign is just the next step into making the Herald-Press an extension of the Chronicle-Tribune. In a way, it already is. National pages, "Home and Garden" pages, are all put together in Marion. No one in Huntington sees those pages. The brain trust in Marion is already making editorial decisions for the readers in Huntington.
All the Herald-Press newsroom does is try and write stories and take some photos. They send them to Marion where it's all packaged. All the advertising is handled in Marion as well.
In essence, the Herald-Press is the Huntington edition of the Chronicle-Tribune.
Newspapers everywhere in this country are disappearing.
For all practical purposes, the Herald-Press is gone, and empty shell with a new coat of paint slapped on.
So who will tell the stories that need to be told in Huntington County? The Journal-Gazette will cover the biggest stories. There is hope that the TAB will continue to grow and at least give us important news on a weekly basis.
And without a watchdog, who is going to tell us when Steve Updike compares people to terrorists?
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