I Copy That!
Feed back from a blog reader:
“Interesting writings but before submitting to the newspaper you really should run everything past an editor … enough minor grammatical and style mistakes to hurt your credibility. But a tremendous “green” topic and a sensational headshot.”
I copy that! Thank you for taking the time to read my blog. In an effort to retain what credibility my posts have already generated, I will respond to the aforementioned spot light on my grammatical and style mistakes.
Please believe though I am not among the many scholars who penned compelling hard copies on the subject, like The Only Grammar Book You’ll Ever Need by Susan Thurman or Jane Straus‘ Blue Book on Grammar and Punctuation, I do hope readers take my blogs to be the very definition of the word, credible which Merriam-Webster defines as “offering reasonable grounds for being believable.”
I write from the heart.
Blogs should be considered a 21st-century version of the public town square. It is a way for people to make social contact and spread information in an unregulated, unformatted style. It is the ability and power to execute the constitutional right of Freedom of Speech. One post can be 100% grammatically correct while the next mumbled thoughts of a writer no smarter then a 5th Grader!
Greenwich Time provides an opportunity for local bloggers to share and provide community based information.
As a former broadcast news reporter, who incidentally lost my job as a result of forced CBS News cutbacks, I have an intimate understanding of newsrooms and the desires of the staff to provide excellent content with diminishing resources.
Faced with lost advertising revenue, media power houses are looking to new outlets for gathering. On television it is not uncommon to see video or photographs taken by by-standers at the scene of a developing story. Perhaps, blogs attached to websites for community based papers like Greenwich Time answers the challenge to find new ways and resources in the community to deliver and distribute information.
As bloggers, we are separate from the paper and have the flexibility to create our own content. Depending how you look at it, a fortunate or unfortunate consequence of this partnership is that there is no editor to review topics or provide feedback to improve your post.
I would love to employee an editor to help me create blog content that makes the grade when it comes to grammar, and punctuation and idea development. However if companies like News Corp and Hearst; created on an ideology of distributing news content can’t employee a full staff of watchful eyes, how can I possibly compete?
Readers please take my sincere apology for typos and such you might discover while reading my blog… Slash it with red-marks if you must but keep reading! Oh and keep the feedback coming.
(It’s nice to know that if there is no editors paid to review my content, my readers are doing it pro bono.)
XO!
SK
Hi Samantha,
I’m a recent add to the GT blogs. Hope you read mine at http://blog.ctnews.com/bowman. Anyway, thought not interested in design so much I did read this post closely. And then I read all of your posts. I consider myself well-trained in style, grammar and editing (I do it for a living) and must say that you hit the nail on the head with your style. Few outright mistakes and great conversational style. Some people will never forgive starting a sentence with “And.” But the great WF Buckley did it all the time. Watch what your spell-checker does to your posts. For example, you have “employee” in the above post where it should be “employ.” Pretty sure you suffered from a spell-checker attack on that. If you want someone to read your stuff before posting, I’d be glad to do it for you. Don’t think you need it but, let me know.
Cheers,
John
Comment by bowman — September 6th, 2009 @ 12:46 am