“There are plenty of women who succeed and rise to the top of news organizations. They sometimes make great personal sacrifices to do so. This was always true, but it’s even more so now with the brutal demands of the 24/7 news cycle.”
– Alex Pham leaves Los Angeles Times for a job that gives her more flexibility | JIMROMENESKO.COM
It’s been a big breaking news day here — brush fires, exploding buses, now Cronkite died. What a crazy day and its not even half over for me. I know we were scrambling to get all this news on our site, especially as we impatiently waited for network to hurry up and OK the news for the local sites. So I can imagine that the LAT web staff was similarly crazed, seeing as how they left October 20, 2030 on their obit. Which I’m sure was prepared much more recently in the past. To their credit, I think the date only stayed up for about five minutes. Click to view it bigger.
At least, that’s my guess. I, along with probably thousands of readers clicked on the story, “Is The U.S. going overboard on bailouts?” I, of course, get up around 11, so this story has probably been up for at least 11 hours. But when I clicked on the story, it was still not fixed. Of course, the word “bailout” is arguably a recent phenomenon, correctly used as two distinct words, but morphing into one with all the recent — you got it, bailouts.
"upnearly" a new LAT word
Now, one of those “two-words-in-one” gaffes is normal; I was prepared to let it go and just keep reading (even though it was all the way at the top of the story). But then there was another!
"bailoutsadd" -- three words in one!
Hopefully, that class-action lawsuit filed by the LAT ex- and current employees can help pay for some new copy editors.
Neptune's Net by Bob Chamberlin/Los Angeles Times
Is it just me, or have the L.A. Times’ writers finally begun to realize that not everyone can afford to go to Europe or eat at 4-star restaurants?? Today, they finally came up with a list of places you can reach with one gas tank. Oh, there are so many places, but their list includes Vasquez Rocks, Neptune’s Net and Carpinteria State Beach. Not a bad list! Neptune’s Net is a place I’m especially eager to visit. (And, is it just me, but was this the place featured in “That Thing You Do!”?? Remember, Joe’s Shrimp Shack?) A few things I wish they had also included are fees — parking fees, admission fees. Oh well. That’s why you get the website addresses, I guess.
But in Los Angeles, there are so many other places that can be done for on the cheap, admission, gas and mileage-wise. Here are a few of the places I’ve been meaning to check out:
CNET’s got screen shots of a few advance stories the L.A. Times had prepared pending the announcement of Obama’s VP. Is it really their ‘Dewey Defeats Truman’ moment? Not quite.
First off, journalists have to do this stuff. It’s not fun, believe me. I remember a few years ago, a bunch of AP’s prepared obituaries got out. That’s just a fact of life in journalism. They’re not making things up, as one commenter in the CNET article suggested. They’re preparing — after all, wasn’t the Obama campaign being all coy for a while? Nobody was sure, so as you would expect your local newspaper to do, they were covering all their bases.
Their only boo boo was putting the stories on a server that was accessible by the public. That happens. Just be glad the stories weren’t slugged (named, in news speak) goofy names, like Obama.Chooses.OldGuy or Obama.VP.BallBuster. Yeah, that’s happened, but not exactly like that.