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Sound Off for July 13, 2008
| Saturday, Jul 12 2008 8:24 PM
Last Updated: Monday, Jul 14 2008 8:44 AM
READER: You people seem to be playing tricks with the newspaper. Why?
You put the Local section in the headlines section; then you undid that and put the Eye Street section in the Local section.
You put photos across the top of the front page and move the masthead up and down across those from one day to the next, until last Wednesday when you moved it completely off the page!
You’re making me crazy! What is going on?
Sharon Vignol
MULLEN: Sorry to mess with your mind, Sharon. We did collapse the Local section into the A section, to save a little newsprint and also to give readers a more compact paper on the busiest morning of the week. We then heard from readers that they liked having a Local cover each day, so we made the Eye Street switch you mentioned.
We understand the value of consistency, but we also like to act when a change is needed. We really do try to keep the interests of our readers foremost in our minds during any change.
That said, the missing masthead last Wednesday was a design/production error. We’ll try to be more careful. I’m glad you still found us.
READER: I’m taking issue with the overly alarmist nature of your new e-mail alert entitled “4th of July Mayhem.” This title suggests a violent and chaotic series of events that separates this year’s festivities with other years. Not only that, I couldn’t help but feel there was an undertone of anti-fireworks sentiment to the whole thing, that readers wouldn’t be off base to equate this year’s “Mayhem” with the existence of fireworks, and perhaps we would do good to prevent the “Mayhem” next year. Wink Wink.
Frank Costa
MULLEN: Frank, I’m in agreement that “mayhem” wasn’t the right word, and the headline could have been much better.
READER: I know you try to accommodate all your readership, but catering to the little green men who arrived in flying saucers is a bit much! The headline on page B5 of the July 6 issue, “Xpxo xpxo xpxo xp xo x pxo xpxo xpxo xpxox,” couldn’t be for much of anyone else.
Everett Greene
MULLEN: This is clearly an example of mayhem in our production system. This “placeholder” headline made it into only about 1,000 papers before we fixed it, but I wish we’d caught it sooner.
Still, if we find that such headlines attract a significant number of little green readers, I assure you that you’ll be seeing more of them.
READER: I was just reading the “Barnett’s Numbers Wrong” story and I noted some apostrophe abuse that raised some questions for me. The abuse came in the quote ascribed to Randy Thomasson:
“Our attorney will be issuing a well-researched legal analysis later this week which show’s this ordinance is indeed constitutional, said Randy Thomasson, President of Campaign for Children and Families, which wrote the ordinance. The constitution says county’s can pass any ordinance that is not in conflict with statue.”
Obviously, the verb “shows” does not take an apostrophe, just like every other verb in the English language, and the plural noun “counties” will not take an apostrophe unless the writer is referring to something possessed by multiple counties, as in “the counties’ borders.” I will not go into the images created by being in conflict with a statue.
I have never worked for a newspaper, but I know that stories often have to be rushed to publication, leaving little time for editing. Thus, I usually forgive malapropisms (one of your reporters once made reference to “a basic tenant of law”) and punctuation errors without prejudice, despite the fact that I am an English teacher. But in this case, I could not help but be curious.
Were these the errors of Mr. Thomasson or your reporter? I know that reporters are human and mistakes do occur. Mike Griffith never met an apostrophe he did not want to abuse, but I still enjoy his columns.
Just curious,
Jason Ruff
MULLEN: The misplaced apostrophe was our error. Luckily, this mishap appeared only briefly online, and was corrected a short time later on Bakersfield.com and in print.
I agree we shouldn’t make these mistakes. We’ll continue to correct them, but also continue to push news onto Bakersfield.com as quickly as possible.
READER: Here’s a question: Do writers for The Californian read The Californian?
Today’s issue has a short piece on the heat wave (Unsigned and I can see why) referring to the anticipated high for the week of 105 degrees on Wednesday. The weather page (B6) says the high will be on Thursday at 106! Hmm.
David Campbell
MULLEN: This is a bit of a pet peeve for me, too. Our reporters talk to different forecasters, whose predictions sometimes differ from our weather page provider, and they all change what they say throughout the day. We try to be consistent as possible, and we will try harder.
The main thing we should take away from all of this is, it’s hot.
READER: On the whole I like The Californian, the layout and am glad the Local section is back on Mondays. Dianne Hardisty, Lois Henry, Robert Price and Herb Benham contribute greatly to the paper.
I do have one complaint, and that is those sticker ads on the front page that advertise everything from pizza to tires.
When I pull them off they invariably take part of the page with them and usually this is in the middle of an article I am interested in. Needless to say, whatever they’re selling I ain’t buying.
Lloyd Kingham
MULLEN: I also hate it when those things pull off a word or a chunk of headline. I weigh that feeling against the fact that they help pay the bills (both the paper’s and mine, and also the advertisers’ for that matter).
If you enjoy Dianne, Lois, Bob and Herb, take that ad and spring for a new set of whitewalls. We’ll all feel a little extra traction.