What is a journalist?
An extinct species.
I recently sent off another e-mail to two of the senior people at what remains of the local newspaper around here. They ran a story on their web site to cover an event at which clergy of all the churches in an area town got together and had a lie-in to demonstrate their support for the fight against police brutality. Throughout the article the author used the word "lay" (in its various tenses) where he or she quite obviously intended to use the word "lie."
I think I sent off my e-mail two, possibly three, days ago. I haven't had any response yet from either of the two addressees. I don't expect them to reply -- I have written them before about similar such errors in their rag (and e-rag). They obviously don't care. Forty years ago a good friend was an investigative editor for that newspaper. Back then, they had editors, people who checked articles before they went to press to try to catch egregious errors. The current version of the newspaper is a shadow of its former self. I don't think there is any such thing as a copy editor any more. I'm pretty certain that most of the reporters never go to the office -- they work from home in their assigned town write their stories on a personal computer, submit them on-line and the stories go directly to print and the web site without ever being checked by anyone.
And they get very defensive when people like me point out the flaws in this arrangement.
