First of all, my town made national news (again) for negative reasons this morning, which isn't my gripe. I mean, I'm all for truth and honesty, so when something horrible or, in this case, hilarious happens in your own backyard (figuratively speaking), it's only natural that the AP is gonna get a hold of it and spread it around a little bit. My complaint here is that not only does the national interest New Castle seems to occasionally receive almost always involve drugs, murder, juvenile charges, or all three, but on top of that, one of the news articles that comes up in any Google search is from the town itself. And it's poorly written.
The New Castle News reads like a high school kid wrote it. And you know what, I wouldn't be all that surprised if that was true, either. I think maybe someone's kid is ghostwriting for them. I mean, for the most part. After all, we still have plenty of stuff from the Associated Press, and they're usually pretty good about, oh I don't know, stuff like not having typos, or strategically placed weasel words and other biased bullshit in their reports. The main thing that got up my ass today, though, is the frequent use of SLANG.
Take this article for instance. Luckily, the headline alone makes me giggle, so I won't go off the deep end this time, but just read the third "paragraph", or, as we outside of the NC NEWS' staff like to call it, the third sentence. Go ahead.
"The bag of weed". Now, you might not realize this, but the term "weed" is a slang term. I believe the correct, legal term is "marijuana". Why does this bother me? I'll tell you...
It's a news article. It's not your fucking blog, or an opinion column. It's a NEWS REPORT. You don't use slang terms in a news article unless you're directly quoting someone. You don't write the way you talk. You're not talking to your drinking buddy, you're not telling him (or her) a funny story, you're reporting. Write like a goddamn reporter, ferchrissakes.
UPDATE! The saga continues... http://goo.gl/JcSPK ("Packaged pot"? When did it become a misdemeanor to distribute cookware!? ;P)
The New Castle News is such a piece of shit. 90% of their stories are AP and things that you can read online (and I frequently do before the news paper is even available). The rest is garbage that is poorly written and lacks any kind of integrity. I'll never forget this garbage piece that someone wrote after the DaVinci Code came out... basically lumping all pagans everywhere from all of history into one group and claiming that they were all about prostitutes, etc. It was written by a Christian, clearly someone who was completely uneducated, and NOT presented as an opinion piece. I actually wrote them an e-mail, but as expected, got no response. Oh and if all that weren't bad enough, there's the way the website is set up so that you have to click three times to actually get to the article, then click again after every two paragraphs. Of course, there's an add RIGHT IN THE MIDDLE OF THE PAGE. And pop-ups. Ridiculous.
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