If you feel a news story does not measure up to expected journalistic standards, bring it to the Journalism Dry Cleaner. Through our collective wisdom, we will strip it of all offensive dirt.

REAL TIME VISITORS

LIVE STATS

BLOG GUESTS

Thursday, 29 January 2015

A LOOSE EDITORIAL GUIDE ON HOW TO LOSE WITHOUT SENSE OF LOSS

For some Kenyan newsrooms, one of those bad days in the office is gradually becoming like any other day, where editorial mishaps neither elicit shame nor the need to shape up. Mistakes and apologies follow in quick succession for weighty matters. But typos appear to be too lightweight. This is the loose editorial guide on how to lose without sense of loss.



But the eyesores that are typos, amount to a visual assault on the audience, especially where the intended meaning is shoved out of the window.

In the above example, what is the viewer supposed to make of the lower third tag:

Herders express fear for lose of livestock

I know it can happen to the best of editors, (and S is a good neighbour of E on the keyboard).

But the acceptable practice is to rectify on air errors as soon as they are spotted, however minor. The fact that this one lingered till the end of the story points to other deficient gate keeping abilities.


And the next sentencing of semantics reads:

Projcet is a collaboration between Kenya, USA and UK

I sret ym scae!

2 comments:

bankelele said...

I've stopped taking screen shots of the errors as they are too many (during live events)

Albert Gachiri said...

I appreciate your apathy. It gets really tiresome. But I won't stop pointing them out, till the errors stop (hopefully in this lifetime).