How about a little damn research?
Miz Becky often tells me that I'm an old, crabby man before my time, and that my rants at newspapers prove her point.
Before my time or no, the state of editorial quality in modern newspapers drives me frickin' batshit. The most common example, of course, is papers running spellcheck in lieu of an editorial sweep of an article. The result, of course, is tens of examples in any given day — often nearly one per article — of the incorrect homonym being used. "Riding a slay"? "They gave last rights"? I'm sorry, I thought I was reading a newspaper, but this is obviously a MySpace blog.
Today's rant, though, is inspired by an even more egregious bit of lousy editorship. In what's nominally an article in the science section (The Cute Factor), New York Times writer Natalie Angier writes:
If the mere sight of Tai Shan, the roly-poly, goofily gamboling masked bandit of a panda cub now on view at the National Zoo isn't enough to make you melt, then maybe the crush of his human onlookers, the furious flashing of their cameras and the heated gasps of their mass rapture will do the trick.[ . . . ]
The 6-month-old, 25-pound Tai Shan - whose name is pronounced tie-SHON and means, for no obvious reason, "peaceful mountain" - is the first surviving giant panda cub ever born at the Smithsonian's zoo.
"For no obvious reason"? Excuse me?
First of all, what is this sentence doing in this article? Is this an editorial? No, it's an article. Does this move the article forward? No, it's an awkward, throwaway hiccup in an otherwise pretty interesting article on what we humans respond to as cute.
Second, if you're going to bring the meaning of the name up, instead of being so cavalier about it (again, in the science section of what the editors like to call our nation's paper of record), maybe Ms. Angier should have taken the same nine seconds it took me to do a google search and find an article that explained where the name came from:
Panda Cub's Birthday Present: A NameThe National Zoo's giant panda cub was officially dubbed Tai Shan yesterday and heralded as a symbol -- a very cute symbol -- of friendship between the United States and China.
Tai Shan, pronounced tie shahn and meaning "peaceful mountain," was the favorite in the zoo's online poll offering five choices approved by the China Wildlife Conservation Association. One of three names suggested by the Panda House staff, it garnered about 44 percent of more than 202,000 votes cast.
[ . . . ]Chinese officials noted that Tai Shan is the name of a famous mountain north of the city of Tai'an in Shandong Province in eastern China. They embraced the theme of peace embodied in the choice.
"Giant pandas are a valuable resource in China and also a great gift of China to the world and the United States," Yan Xun, deputy director of China's Conservation Department, said through a translator.
Whew. Hang on a sec while I rest up from the effort of tracking that obscure piece of information down.
Now, I don't blame Ms. Angier. She's a writer. It's her job to write. She wrote. But where the hell was an editor to cut that out?
Sure, it's possible I'm overreacting. But it's exactly this kind of lack of effort on the part of editors and fact-checkers that let someone like Jayson Blair (I did the search for you) slip fabrications through.
I tell you, if they come anywhere near me, I'm going to whack them with my cane.
Savannah, on Wednesday, January 4, 2006 at 4:35 AM:
It's unfortunate, because Natalie Angier is otherwise (IMHO) a very intelligent and insightful science writer. I've read other articles by her and enjoyed them, and not found any lapses like that that I've been aware of. When I have time, I'll have to read the whole article you quote.
As far as her beat-down of the panda's name, I suspect that, in this case, the slant of the article itself might have caused the problem. "Cute" was being evaluated unfavorably, the panda was perceived as "cute," therefore everything about the panda was "fucking stupid." Why inquire into the significance of the panda's name when your topic has defined the panda itself--or all forms of human interaction with it--as meaningless because it's cute? Again, the sad thing is that Natalie Angier does not tend to make that kind of mistake in her writing. She *is* one of the good guys. David, I urge you to seek out some of her other work and give it a chance.
rfkj, on Wednesday, January 4, 2006 at 7:51 PM:
I agree that it should have been edited out, but for an entirely different reason: the way it's written, it says that "Tai Shan" means "peaceful mountain" for "no obvious reason." That's a pretty damn stupid thing to say about a language. "Berg" means "mountain" in German for no obvious reason, other than that it does.
We're just assuming that what she meant was that the panda is named Tai Shan for no obvious reason. What she actually wrote is stupider by far.
I'm with you, though. I fricking hate all the misplaced homonyms and outright misspellings that are plastered all over the papers and all over the news sites and all over the news channels on TV. I've bemoaned the poor headline writing at the NYT and CNN and before. It's a tragedy.
(My favorite recent example of poor research: "King Kong has always been about the love story between Ann Darrow and the giant ape," a sentence clearly written by someone who has never actually seen the original movie.)
Melinda Co, on Friday, March 3, 2006 at 4:19 PM:
The problem is even more severe than faulty research. We are seeing an epidemic of total cultural illiteracy. This is what happens when people who stole their term papers off the internet throughout college and never bothered to learn anything are admitted to positions of journalistic influence.
I'm really enjoying your blog and recommending it like crazy. As you might suspect, I'm also a blogger and getting tons of ideas from the technology and graphics you use. Don't worry - no plagiarism will occur.