Neil deMause

Picking on Newsday again, but jeez, it’s in a freaking headline:

Isles game in KC doesn’t phase Hempstead’s Murray

Good thing, because if a town supervisor on Long Island possessed mutant superpowers, hardly anyone would be unfazed.

This week’s homonym-impaired media outlet: Crain’s New York Business, which reported on the release of a fake edition of the New York Times thusly:

Five years and hundreds of billions of dollars later, the war in Iraq is over. At least that’s what some readers read Wednesday when they picked up a faux version of The New York Times.

Early Wednesday, a hoard of volunteers distributed free copies of a fake NYT, rife with headlines like “Iraq War Ends” and “Universities to Be Free” printed under the modified mantra “All The News We Hope to Print.”

Maybe that’s the problem: The fake Times publishers have been hoarding all the copy editors.

Headline from today’s New York Sun:

Cost of Tuition at Colleges Breasts $50,000 a Year

“Breast” (the verb) can mean to “overcome” (as in an obstacle), but not to surpass, which is what the Sun means here. Either some headline writer got lazy with the thesaurus, or this writing headlines to nab Google hits thing has gotten out of hand.

NBC’s Olympics coverage has generated an awful lot of laughably awkward prose – my favorite was the gymnastics commentator (not sure who – don’t think it was Al Trautwig) who remarked that “If the Chinese spell ‘history’ with a capital H, that goes double for their rivalry with Japan.”

At least TV commentators, though, can argue that they need to fill hours of broadcast time with no ability to go back and edit themselves. The New York Times doesn’t have that excuse for this line that appeared in an article today about one-legged Olympic swimmer Natalie du Toit:

Her right leg works overtime, cramping in long races. Exhaustion drops her hips low into the water. A chiropractor must balance her body, as if it were a checkbook.

If the New York Times is using chiropractors to balance its checkbook, that explains a lot.

From an article in amNewYork (Newsday’s free daily) on how European tourists don’t tip enough at New York restaurants:

Some restaurants have wizened up and now put gratuity right into the bill.

Unless they’re talking about really old restaurateurs, amNewYork’s editors need to wise up and get a dictionary. Not to mention an article for “gratuity,” which isn’t a collective noun like “coffee.” Two grammatical errors in one sentence – now that’s giving readers their money’s worth.

What is it about journalists and homonyms? From today’s Newsday story on the passport kerfuffle:

A Passportgate scandal swept the presidential campaign Friday as the State Department revealed it is investigating unauthorized peaks into the passport files of all three White House candidates.

No word on whether the files contained unauthorized valleys as well.

A two-fer from Tom D’Angelo in the Palm Beach Post:

Loria, making his first appearance at spring training, is so eager to start construction that “I’d like to hit the button,” he said when asked about the razing of the Orange Bowl. The $615 million stadium project will be built on the Orange Bowl sight.

Followed a bit later by:

The Marlins could loose its fans from Palm Beach County when they move into the new stadium.

Freedom at last for Marlins fans imprisoned in Palm Beach? Now that would be a site for soar eyes.

Never let it be said that the journilliteracy watch doesn’t cast its net far and wide. From the Kane County Chronicle in Kane County, Illinois, comes this report:

Geneva High School is taking safety precautions after a threat was found written on the wall of a student bathroom, eluding to violence at the school tomorrow.

Unfortunately, the offending graffiti got away.

Tuesday’s amNewYork had this to say about late-night shows’ attempts to get back on the air despite the writers’ strike:

Noticeably absent from the hoopla is David Letterman, who is trying another tact, according to Tom Keaney, spokesman for the host’s production company Worldwide Pants Incorporated. Keaney said the production company is trying to secure an interim agreement with the Writers Guild.

For Letterman to use tact certainly would be another tack.

Here’s Emily Friedman of ABC News going all spoilery in her piece on the controversy over “The Golden Compass”:

As Lyra gets closer to her goal of reaching the Magisterium – located in the alternate universe of Bolvanger – she realizes that they have been capturing children, removing their souls and preventing them from being touched by “dust,” a substance that is eluded to be representative of the free will the Magisterium is trying to avoid and eliminate.

What’s eluding Emily Friedman (and the ABC News copy editors): the word “allude.”