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Previous: Wall switches | Main | Next: Halloween candy aisle in mid-August
September 14, 2005 09:19 AM
Broken: NYT pointer to website
From the New York Times print edition today, page B9.
Definitely broken. webaddress/here returns a DNS error. I don't think it exists.
/I keeeed, I keeeeed.
Broken, or Genius?
This has gotten us all talking about the New York Times. Someone actually scanned a newspaper. It's been 10 years since I've looked at a newspaper. Now I'm tempted to go on a scavenger hunt across the paper for other dummy text.
Amusing, maybe a bit sad, but I have to say that errors and mistakes are not "broken." The concept of printing online links to more information than can be printed is fundamentally good. If someone goofs and forgets to input the links, that's a mistake. It may be a BIG mistake when it appears in the New York Times, but let's leave "broken" to fundamental design errors.
Zarel,
read this:
Posted by: Onery
If these atheists don't like it, they shouldn't have to recite the pledge! But to those of us who believe this nation is "under God" we should have the right to reaffirm our beliefs!
Me thinks you just blasted someone who agrees w/you.
joleta, how does "mistake" translate into "not broken?" The mistake is broken because:It fails to give readers the information it was supposed to be presenting.It reflects poorly on the paper.
That reminds me of a hand out we were given for research in my... uh, research class. We were handed out a page of links for research. Unfourtanately, they were merely underlined words. No matter how many times I hit them with my fingure, the informatnion didn't appear ;)
The URL on the bottom wasn't on the copies, and our teacher didn't have the original since it had been made by another teacher.
Excuse me for butting in, but I think it's poetry. It speaks to me. Full of potential. You get from it what you bring to it. All that.
Nobody is perfect. NY Times can pay a lot of money to catch these mistakes/broken (whatever) but sooner or later they will still commit a mistake/broken (whatever).
I'm a proud dummy. It is broken...
Should have been spotted in editing but... who cares about the 6b readers anyway... :-)
I think the typography on the strapline is broken. What is that Gothic 'T' doing in 'On The Web'? (I don't take the NYT so I assume this is a permanent feature, not a 'typo').
My local evening paper is constantly making mistakes like this, with CAPTION: caption caption caption caption and such like. Not broken as such, just missed. It serves as a caution never to put 'fill in explanation for the idiots' or anything like that into something you write.
Programming code also goes through a review/sub-editing process, at least in most professional software houses. I just got an action at a peer review saying 'You have a comment saying TODO: but you've done it, there's nothing left to do'. And the reviewer was right in both regards-- I should have taken out the redundant comment.
My favorite this week was from the cap editor for Sky News with the strapline BUSH: WORST DISASTER TO HIT U.S. Reprinted in Private Eye and no doubt elsewhere.
Maybe this is actually an editorial poem commenting on the quality of content of the web?
As in:
"It is all a bunch of dummy text, no matter what web address."
ya, ummmmmm defintley not broken bud. see cuz dummy means it is a display as in not a web adress as in its just there to explain how its not broken, for that to be broken there would be n text there so therefor they put dummy text
Actually, what's broken is the NYT's internal process. In my experience, dummy text for a periodical is standardized, and says something along the lines of "This text is for placement only. If you can read this, please call xxx-xxxx." And repeat. This lets the pub know that the mistake was made, and in cases where it is really important, correct it the next day. Also, not all pubs are edited and printed in the same place - bits get substituted in in different locations. That process helps the publication iron out any issues, or at very least fire someone's butt! Broken!
Linking from print to web is a good idea; yes. What's BROKEN is every single item in every single PRINT TigerDirect catalog has an "Add To Cart" button. No matter how many times I jam my finger into the printed page on that button, I can't get the item into my cart!!!
But it is dumb.
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Previous: Wall switches | Main | Next: Halloween candy aisle in mid-August
I don't get it. I tried going to web address/here, but got an error.
Just kidding. Don't they have editors there?
Posted by: Dorri Williams at September 14, 2005 09:22 AM