paul schreiber

Margo Howard, Ann Landers’ daughter, is also an advice columnist. Recently, she received a question from some religious fanatics:

Our daughter started college a year ago, and we’ve noticed during her visits home that she’s not the sweet, innocent girl we sent away for higher learning. We raised her with strong Christian beliefs, but lately she’s saying that she’s joined an atheist club on campus and is questioning everything we taught her. Now my husband refuses to let her in the house and is threatening to turn her in to the FBI.

Margo’s answer was spot-on.

Check out the question about the in-laws, too.

To: Bureau of Accuracy/Public Editor
Janet Hurley, Entertainment Editor
Greg Quill, Entertainment columnist
Toronto Star

This letter is in regards to Mr. Quill’s article, “Shaye no longer a trio, except on TV,” originally published at thestar.com/article/259441. [1]

I was extremely disappointed with Mr. Quill’s sloppy and wildly inaccurate article. It listed an incorrect cause of death for Tara MacLean’s sister, an incorrect number of children for Ms. MacLean and made several false statements regarding Shaye’s relationship with their record company.

Poor “reporting” such as this would not have made it to print when I was the arts editor for my university paper, Imprint. I expected Canada’s largest newspaper to have higher standards. Clearly, I was wrong.

Tara MacLean has enumerated the errors on her blog.

Perhaps Mr. Quill should stick to performing music and refrain from writing about it.

Sincerely,
Paul Schreiber

[1] The article has been updated with some corrections since its publication. That does not excuse the shoddy work.

Jim Romenesko over at Poynter forums explains how to “reenergize readers” — that is, how to fix your newspaper, including:

• Go out in street, see news, write it up.
• Yank all columnists who write with the word “I” or cutesy variation thereof; run no column that contains not an ounce of new reporting; hold public execution in town square of any columnist who writes “searching for a column topic” column.

…if only.

the san francisco bay guardian’s editor, tim redmond, has been drinking something funny lately, resulting in him ranting against craigslist:

The problem with that is simple: When Craig comes to town (and he’s coming to just about every town in the nation soon), the existing community institutions – say, the locally owned weekly newspaper – have a very hard time competing. In many ways, he’s like a Wal-Mart – yeah, landlords get cheaper real estate ads, and consumers find some bargains, but the money all goes out of town. And he puts nothing back into the community: He doesn’t, for example, hire reporters or serve as a community watchdog.

… because his paper is losing classified ad revenue. wah, wah, my business model is obsolete!

Anil Dash told him to jump off a cliff. Well, Anil was much nicer. And more eloquent.

Thanks, Keith Olbermann — that was excellent.

Reuters 2005 photos of the year.

If the New York Times editors were given Gawker’s content, you’d get this.

Common Errors in English.