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Mistakes Are Embarrassing the Publishing Industry

nytimes.com

1–10 of 57 posts

Re: Mistakes Are Embarrassing the Publishing Industry

#4
I'd always assumed publishers _were_ doing this already. If not, whence the whining and chagrin over low rent "bloggers" somehow not being comparable to deal authors and journalists?

I realize this isn't as widely held a view as it was 10-20 years ago, but bloggers used to be looked at with disdain, untrustworthy because of the lack of reputability that came with published materials.

This makes me further question whether there was much gatekeeping at all even before this fake news, post truth era.

Re: Mistakes Are Embarrassing the Publishing Industry

#6

I'd always assumed publishers _were_ doing this already. If not, whence the whining and chagrin over low rent "bloggers" somehow not being comparable to deal authors and journalists? I realize this isn't as widely held a view as it was 10-20 years ago, but bloggers used to be looked at with disdain, untrustworthy because of the lack of reputability that came with published materials. This makes me further question wh…

>This makes me further question whether there was much gatekeeping at all even before this fake news, post truth era.

It was much harder to comment on things and have an international audience for your outrage. Basically to criticize a piece of work was reserved to a few professional critics writing in newspapers. Now everyone who spots a mistake can write about it on Twitter, Amazon review or plenty of other channels.

Re: Mistakes Are Embarrassing the Publishing Industry

#7
This was inevitable and is the culmination of two things:

- Too much hypothesis-driven science that results in statistically significant, but untrustworthy results. It's easy to find statistically significant data to backup whatever crazy thing your brain comes up with.

- Too much pseudo-scientifically backed popular press. Popular science is useful for disemminating science that has been solidified through decades of falsiability tests, not last month's papers.

Re: Mistakes Are Embarrassing the Publishing Industry

#8
post #3

It is always entertaining when the 'newspaper of record' shames other publications for their mistakes and failings.

They are working hard to lose the newspaper of record status.

They omitted some critical information last week in the Kavanaugh story and blamed it on editorial process.

Reporters Robin Pogrebin and Kate Kelly said in an interview on MSNBC that they wrote in the draft of their Sunday Review piece that a woman who Kavanaugh was said to have exposed himself to while a student at Yale had told others she had no recollection of the alleged incident. Their editors, they say, removed the reference. “It was just sort of. . . in the haste of the editing process,” said Pogrebin.

Couple more of these and they will be in Buzzfeed level of trustworthiness.

Re: Mistakes Are Embarrassing the Publishing Industry

#9
post #5
post #2

I'd settle for spelling and malapropism checks.

Yeah, I'm not sure if this is true, but I have the impression the error rates have increased in the last decades, despite spell-check becoming more effective at finding them at low cost.

Most publishers seam too have decided its knot worth employing copy-editors any moor.
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