Boston Globe

[Totally Krossed Out]

Odd stuff. The Globe's rep was once glowing. What's happened there? First the Peter May, Paul Pierce mishap. Now this (text from bostonsportsmedia.com)

"I've gotten a number of emails this morning regarding a parapgraph in Nick Cafardo's column this morning on David Murphy.

The passage in question is this one:

The '03 draft produced Rocco Baldelli, Mark Teixeira, Jose Reyes, Joe Mauer, Miguel Cabrera, Justin Morneau, Johan Santana, Travis Haffner, Hanley Ramirez, Rich Harden, Lastings Milledge, Brandon Wood, Nick Markakis, Chad Cordero, and Rickey Weeks.
When one thinks of it in that context, Murphy hasn't measured up, but the journey isn't over.


So where do we begin here?



It's Travis Hafner, not Haffner. In addition, he was drafted in 1996, not 2003.


Johan Santana was originally drafted in 1995. In 2003, he was in his fourth year with the Twins.


Rocco Baldelli was drafted in 2000.


Mark Teixeira was drafted in 2001.


Jose Reyes was signed as an underage FA in 1999.


Joe Mauer was drafted in 2001.


Miguel Cabrera was signed in 1999.


Justin Morneau was drafted in 1999.


Hanley Ramirez was an undrafted free agent signed in 2000.


Rich Harden was drafted in 2000.


Minor quibble, (compared with the rest): It's Rickie Weeks, not Rickey.

The only players in Nick's list actually drafted in 2003 are Wood, Cordero, Weeks, Milledge and Markakis.

What is going on over there? Is it that hard to check a few facts? Nick is trying to compare Murphy to other players drafted in his class, and just totally messed it up. It took me all of 5 minutes to confirm all the above information using baseball-reference.com."

 

[ballscribe]

I saw a story in the New York Times during the U.S. Open that was really a notebook items, about five grafs long.
It had seven factual errors in it. Seven.

I was tempted to e-mail the sports editor with it, signing my name. But I slept on it and just let it go. It was embarrassing. Most of the errors could have been corrected with five minutes on google. Couple others were just assumptions by a guy who clearly didn't know his stuff, but dared to presume.

 

[21]

Typo?

 

[Walter_Sobchak]

The only possible explanation for this is that Nick didn't have the 2003 draft in front of him, so he threw a few random names into the column, under the presumption that a copy editor would replace them with stars from the actual 2003 draft.

Because Cafardo really isn't that dumb -- at least I hope not.

 

[21]

The only possible explanation for this is that Nick didn't have the 2003 draft in front of him, so he threw a few random names into the column, under the presumption that a copy editor would replace them with stars from the actual 2003 draft.

Because Cafardo really isn't that dumb -- at least I hope not.

A copy editor could tell us otherwise, but if he really did think that it was the copy editor's job to do that....he would have to be that dumb. Not saying he is, just that it would be an incredibly dumb assumption.

 

[lone star scribe]

If Cafardo -- or anybody -- put those names in his column and didn't bother to tell the copy editor, "Hey, I can't check these, check them out and make sure they're all 2003 draft," then he is that dumb.

 

[Bruce_Shoebottom]

They have enough trouble getting their corrections right:

From the July 21 edition:

Correction: Because of a reporting error, the name of the UFC welterweight champion was incorrect in the Boxing Notes in Wednesday's Sports section. The UFC welterweight champ is Matt Hughes. Also, the opponent of UFC fighter Chuck Liddell was incorrect. Liddell will fight Renato Sorbal.

July 22:

Correction: Because of an editing error, the last name of UFC fighter Renato Sobral was misspelled in a correction in yesterday's Globe.

 

[Evil Bastard (aka Chris_L)]

Its funny because the people who make fun of blogs always say that blogs have no editors to fact-check what is written.

The Globe has fallen fast and hard. Only Bob Ryan and maybe Gordon Edes are worth the effort of getting the sports section anymore.

Just as an FYI - the Globe's reported circulation is ust above 400,000 during the week. That means that more than double the amount of people watch Family Guy re-runs on the Cartoon Network (roughly 800,000 viewers nightl) than get the Globe.

 

[Jones]

At risk of piling on, if Nick couldn't correctly name more members of the 2003 draft class, then his entire thesis -- comparing Murphy to his peers -- is kind of flawed. I mean, yeah, next to Hafner and Santana, Murphy's a little weak, but I'm not sure the comparison is as unfavorable when you line him up next to his actual draftmates.

I dunno. We've all made mistakes. But that graf's a whopper.

And make sure you get credit for writing their correction notice, Kross.

 

[SF_Express]

Its funny because the people who make fun of blogs always say that blogs have no editors to fact-check what is written.

The Globe has fallen fast and hard. Only Bob Ryan and maybe Gordon Edes are worth the effort of getting the sports section anymore.

Just as an FYI - the Globe's reported circulation is ust above 400,000 during the week. That means that more than double the amount of people watch Family Guy re-runs on the Cartoon Network (roughly 800,000 viewers nightl) than get the Globe.

Chris, whatever legitimate points are made on here, to compare national network TV rerun viewership vs. the circulation of ANY daily local newspaper is silly. Whatever USA Today or WSJ or NYT is pulling these days, I can find a Friends episode on TBS that beat it. A completely irrelevant point.

 

[Evil Bastard (aka Chris_L)]

Its funny because the people who make fun of blogs always say that blogs have no editors to fact-check what is written.

The Globe has fallen fast and hard. Only Bob Ryan and maybe Gordon Edes are worth the effort of getting the sports section anymore.

Just as an FYI - the Globe's reported circulation is ust above 400,000 during the week. That means that more than double the amount of people watch Family Guy re-runs on the Cartoon Network (roughly 800,000 viewers nightl) than get the Globe.

Chris, whatever legitimate points are made on here, to compare national network TV rerun viewership vs. the circulation of ANY daily local newspaper is silly. Whatever USA Today or WSJ or NYT is pulling these days, I can find a Friends episode on TBS that beat it. A completely irrelevant point.

Not any more irrelevant as comparing Rocco Baldelli's draft year to David Murphy's

 

[Frank_Ridgeway]

Fact-checking on daily newspaper sports sections varies from paper to paper, and even on the best of them from night to night and from copy editor to copy editor. You know, it is like patrolling the border, only on deadline.

Early in my career I moved from a paper that did minimal fact-checking to a paper that did it extensively to one that hadn't done it at all till I arrived. A guy at that paper once said that when they pronounce him dead, he wants me there to double-check before they embalm him. But if he could have glanced in at the paper I arrived from, he'd have seen I really was nothing unique in that regard, everybody there was just as anal retentive. And stuff got past me sometimes if there was no time, if I was really ill, or if I was overworked and decided that if I have to trust one writer tonight, this one's gonna be the guy I trust because he screws up less than any other writer -- but that night he happens to be off his game, too. Sometimes there is a perfect storm of writer having a bad night, copy editor having a bad night, slot having a bad night, person proofing the page having a bad night. The analogy I've used over the years is that if you slam a thousand grounders at the current Gold Glove shortstop, he's going to boot a few and may even look really horseshirt on the few he misses (asshole in the stands yells, "I could have caught THAT, ya bum!), but cripes, he fielded the other 997.

What we are talking about is a system breaking down, an exception rather than the rule. But at least there IS a system, unlike blogs or small, indy Web sites.