Saturday, January 10, 2015

Situational awareness in the newsroom (or the lack of it!).

I'll take a break from my roots awakening, and go back to stuff that I spot in ST. The foreign news team and the subs must have stayed till as long as possible to bring readers this "latest breaking news" page one lead story (Jan 10):


Kudos to them. But someone forgot to update the News in 5 Minutes summary which did not say that the three gunman (two in the print shop and one in the kosher grocery store) had been killed!...

  
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As for an earlier Page One (Jan 2)...


...I thought there was a bad case of juxtaposition. The lead story was on the horrific stampede at a countdown party in Shanghai. On the top right hand corner of the page was this blurb (which highlighted frivolous games where people play-act escaping from certain harrowing situations)!...


Someone should have been alert enough to get that Life! blurb yanked out and replaced with something else. Proof checking requires the highest standard of alertness. This anecdote from Readers Digest magazine should serve as a reminder to all practising journalists:


And I would not employ anyone in the newsroom who cannot tell me what is wrong here...


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