Back in the days when there were newspapers, and Women’s Editors (yes I know), or cookbooks, recipes were carefully edited to be compact and easy to follow. Each step was separated out. Apparently everyone who knew how to edit a recipe has died, been fired or retired. Too many offences to mention. The worst: “an hour ago, preheat your oven.” You think that doesn’t happen? It does.

Online recipes are the worst offenders because, you know: Internet. Everyone is their own editor, which means most of them are crap editors. Per the 10,000 rule, how many people have spent 10,000 hours copyediting, or have even edited 10,000 pages of copy? Damn few. Which is why smart people (an ever-smaller demographic) scrape up the bucks to hire a human being (for a task that lies beyond the skills of context-free “walk to the carwash” large language models) to edit their recipes before posting or publishing.

Take that last paragraph. Couldn’t a good copyeditor have improved it? Or could a writer be bothered to express the same ideas more clearly?

Where do I go to get back the half-hour of my life I just spent working for the San Francisco Chronicle, creating a a usable recipe (out of, literally, word salad) for my wife—basically English-to-English translation.

According to the MIT Media Lab,  false stories travel up to 20 times faster than true ones. The AP moved a load of codswallop for newspapers of August 8. Someone on the General Desk should have stopped it… if they knew the news agency was committing a journalistic felony. Preventing such errors is what editors are for. Gasoline at $4.14 over Labor Day is NOWHERE NEAR the most expensive figure ever. When you inflate the 2012 figure of $3.82, it is $5.56, the only comparison that makes sense. Gas would have needed to be a buck and a half higher per gallon to actually be the highest.

It’s very simple, as explained here:

Dollar Figures: Meaningless, Useless And Misleading If Not Inflated

The weekend movie box office story sent to AP member papers for publication on August 24 is correct only on its own terms, but otherwise misleading and useless, because it commits a fundamental journalistic sin: failing to inflate historic dollar figures. It would have taken less than 10 minutes to multiply ticket sales by the 2026 admission price of $15, thus making box office figures legitimately comparable, as I did here.

The second of seven paragraphs in the story says: “Spider-Man, which has now made more than $854.9 million in North America, will soon surpass Avengers: Endgame to become the second highest-grossing domestic release of all time.” This comparison is rendered meaningless by the story’s own admission in the fourth paragraph: “not accounting for inflation.” I once worked for UPI; I know about deadlines. “Get it first, but first get it right.”

This was an overnight story, not breaking news. There was time to do it right, had the writer or editors known to avoid the common error that produces misleading and/or meaningless stories based on non-adjusted historic dollar figures.

A more accurate lede graf would have said:

Spider-Man,” which has now made more than $854.9 million in North America, will soon surpass Inside Out 2 and Barbie to become the 33rd highest-grossing domestic release of all time.

The story, if based on meaningful information, could have continued:

If it continues at its present pace, the newest installment could surpass the previous films in the franchise, Spider-Man: No Way Home (adjusted gross $1.2 billion) or Spider-man: Brand New Day (adjusted gross $1 billion).

Somehow, I failed to note the bicentennial of the best piece ever written about trade journalism: Mark Twain: How I Edited An Agricultural Paper (1870).

It is a roman à clef of Twain’s month at the helm of InformationWeek magazine in August 1985[1], when I wrote a third of the magazine myself. You could check that claim if there were an extant copy of InformationWeek from that month—or any other. The Twain essay is the opening shot of my 40,000 word Journalism Reader, which probably sets a WordPress record for length. Also available in ointment or suppository form, or as the Paul Schindler’s Journalism Reader PDF (140 pages long).

[1] With a 115-year Hold For Release

On Aug. 17, every outlet in America that ran reports on weekend gross box-office receipts fell for a lie. The movie Spider-Man: Brand New Day did not have the highest single-day box office ever; Avengers: Endgame did.

Failure to inflate historic monetary figures is a journalistic class 3 felony. Direct dollar comparisons are meaningless, useless and misleading.

The box office figures are just the tip of the iceberg. Incompetent and lazy journalists commit the sin of comparing uninflated dollar figures every day, to the disservice of their readers and listeners.

More Details Here

Newspapers must create original content in order to survive: interesting content that can’t be obtained elsewhere. For example, the San Francisco Chronicle recruited a team of five people dedicated to data journalism. Original content that will always appear first in the paper.

Recently: a map of the demographics of every county in the California. Other recent projects: who owns every piece of property in San Francisco, and in some surrounding areas. The projects comprise both text and graphics. Every American newspaper, without exception, should look this page and start cranking out the same text and graphics for their area.

At one time comics were a Unique Selling Proposition for newspapers. Now, you can read them on the web. Some are free, some are behind paywalls. You can flail about, or accept a curated collection of comics, included in your news subscription at no extra cost. So, while “newspapers” are no longer the only place to get comics, they are the easiest.

This meme courtesy of Nicky Mee

This year’s Headless Body Found In Topless Bar award goes to the NY Post’s sister paper, Britain’s The Sun. It helps if you know that Harry Kane is the British football coach and that the match was played in Texas

Is it sold or is it being sold. Someone apparently decided to have it both ways in the San Francisco Chronicle

I bathe my 18 months at UPI in 1975-76 in the rosy glow of nostalgia. Most of my best journalism stories come from that tiny part of my 25-year career. I remember the joy of my personal life at the time. The excitement of the news. This week I recalled that I did not rise every morning (usually at 5:30) in a fit of joy and gratitude. Lots of double shifts. Lots of “Lobster Tricks” (12am-8am). It was just a job. At the time, I did not know how lucky I was. “You don’t know what you’ve got ‘til it’s gone.”

I was advised to never look ahead as my daughters were growing up; just be sure to savor each stage. I did. I wish I’d been advised to savor my youthful journalism opportunities more thoroughly.

I performed a labor of love for fans of Bob and Ray, the last network radio comedians (Stan Freberg to the contrary notwithstanding).[1] I was frustrated that every source, either book or website, insisted on speaking of their careers in vague terms, “WHDH, then NBC, CBS in the 50s, also WHR and WINS,” et cetera. So I developed what is, as far as I know, the only accurate timeline of their career, the timeline section of the Bob and Ray Wikipedia entry

[1] ) Bob&Ray are among my favorite practitioners of aural humor. And, while we’re at it, here are my written humor favorites.