Thanks again, AP

Tennis agate this week has been leaving out the player's country if that country is Russia or Belarus.

Zhang Shuai (8), China, def. Vitalia Diatchenko, , 3-0, ret.

 

You can probably blame some ultra-gung-ho tournament organizer for that. AP often asks event organizers to send them massive agate as needed, and it was sent out verbatim, in all likelihood.

 

Not AP, but Bloomberg on a cruise ship being grounded. Small wonder, since the story reported the cruise began in Orlando...

 

From the Golf Capsules: it's a miracle Scheffler could even swing a club at that age:

Scheffler wins Match Play to take top spot in world ranking
BC-GLF--Golf Capsules
Mar 27, 2022 6:14 PM - 915 words
By The Associated Press
AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — Scottie Scheffler is the hottest player in golf and now has the ranking to prove it.
Six weeks after his first PGA Tour victory, Scheffler won the Dell Technologies Match Play for his third title in his last five starts, this one enough to move him to No. 1 in the world.
One year after losing in the championship match, the 250-year-old Scheffler never trailed against Kevin Kisner, building a 3-up lead through six holes and giving him no chance to catch up. Scheffler closed him out with a par on the 15th for a 4-and-3 victory.

 

Hey AP, Hakeem Olajuwon is only the biggest name in Houston basketball history. Maybe not spell his last name wrong three times

 

Time warp:

AP Women's Coach of the Year Voting
BC-BKW--AP Coach of the Year Voting
Mar 31, 2022 3:50 PM - 59 words
By The Associated Press
(Selected by the 30-member national media panel that selects the weekly Top 25)
Kim Mulkey, Baylor 10
Dawn Staley, South Carolina 8
Tara VanDerveer, Stanford 3

 

It’s just a jump to the left …

 

The number of mistakes in AP copy is getting straight-up alarming -- like they aren't even doing a basic spellcheck.

 

My Day One lesson of my time as a daily newspaper worker was this: Don't ever trust AP. That was 20+ years ago.

 

Are they even staffing gamers anymore, at least beyond the major pro sports and maybe a few big college games? I've noticed a lot of things seem to be written by an automated program, presumably off a box score. All about 150 words, few details, often with a name or two misspelled or a key detail omitted.
It's to the point where the AP story isn't saving me much time. I still have to go find the school release or a postgame interview on Twitter or YouTube to flesh things out with a quote, or to find who hit a game-winning shot, or just to add a couple more stats. And that's just sports. On the news side, most of the state and regional content that we mostly care about is aggregated briefs that often chop out a lot of important information.
Our publisher is thisclose to dropping AP because of the expense-to-value ratio, and it's getting harder and harder to justify why she shouldn't.

 

Our paper dropped AP about a year and a half ago.

For sports content, we use Field Level Media (w/ USA Today photos), which isn't the best, but it's something. They at least do game previews for all the pro and major colleges, which is good on a slow day.

Overall, we use the Tribune Wire Service, which gives us a lot of national stuff from the big metros like LA Times, Chicago Tribune, NY Daily News and a lot of good regional markets like Charlotte, Miami and AL.com.