All the advertising that's fit to publish

The following ad appeared today on the New York Times Web site with a story published under the headline "Armstrong’s Wall of Silence Fell Rider by Rider":

Ads by Google

what's this?

EPO Cyclist Supplements
Fastest Way to Increase Your
Endurance and Speed - Guaranteed!
www(dot)EPOBoost(dot)com

I salute the New York Times' commendable separation between editorial and advertising content. But why does the Times Web site not permit comments on that story?

© Peter Rozovsky 2012

Does getting it right matter? Not at the New York Times

A story in the New York Times in July said Jerry Sandusky, the former assistant football coach at Pennsylvania State University, "was convicted last month of being a serial pedophile."

That, of course, is arguably wrong, pedophilia being a psychiatric condition or psychological tendency, not an act. You wouldn't call someone found guilty of stealing from a store a convicted kleptomaniac, would you?

No. He or she is a convicted shoplifter. Similarly, Sandusky is not a convicted pedophile, he is a convicted child molester or abuser. (The pairing of convicted and serial is problematic, too, unless serial attacks are a crime separate and distinct from individual attacks.)

The Times' imprecise use of pedophile reminds me of a similar unacknowledged Times mistake, a post about which I reproduce below. In neither case is the Times' mistake likely to confuse readers. But in neither case is the language precisely correct, either. It's disappointing that that is good enough for the New York Times.

========

(Ed. note: This error, published by the New York Times Aug. 6, 2011, remains uncorrected and unacknowledged as of Oct. 3 Oct. 16 Oct. 28 Dec. 11 Dec 18,  Jan. 23, 2012 Jan. 30, 2012 March 25, 2012 June 9 August 20. I don't know why an editor has not corrected the mistake. It's not as if the story's author is Bono, or anything.)

The New York Times recently published the following in its online edition:

NEW NFL RULE IS LIKELY  TO LIMIT KICKOFF RETURNS

By JUDY BATTISTA
c.2011 New York Times News Service

It takes a certain amount of chutzpah to be an NFL kick returner, to peer toward the sky, hoping to catch a wobbling ball, while thousands of pounds of opponents thunder toward you. It is going to take more — maybe much more — this season.

In The Joys of Yiddish, Leo Rosten defined chutzpah as "gall, brazen nerve, effrontery, incredible 'guts,' presumption plus arrogance such as no other word and no other language can do justice to." He also called it "that quality enshrined in a man who, having killed his mother and father, throws himself on the mercy of the court because he is an orphan."

Chutzpah means audacity, in other words, not, as the Times seems to think, bravery. Sure, nerve is a component of and near synonym for both, but this does not mean audacity and bravery are themselves synonymous.

***

Or maybe they have become synonymous, which raises an interesting question: Who determines what's linguistically right and wrong? Respectable authorities, of which the Times is unquestionably one? Trouble is that, while writing and editing at the Times have become sloppier in absolute terms, in relative terms, both may be stronger than before.

That is, though the Times has in recent years given space to Bono and allowed usages once considered mistakes ("Prosecutors like Rudolph W. Giuliani busted the mob, or tried to," New York Times, Aug. 25, 2011), it is surrounded by outlets that care even less about getting things right: newspapers that have de jure or de facto eliminated their copy desks, Web sites that make the most basic editing mistakes and refuse to acknowledge and correct their errors, crime novels that misuse loathe for loath or think that the vibrating organs that enable human speech are vocal chords rather than cords.

So, who decides what's right? Standardized English spelling and, possibly, grammar, meant little before the rise of mass literacy from the middle of the eighteenth century; who says they have to mean anything now? Read loathe for loath or vocal chords for cords, and you'll still probably get what the author intended. Is literacy, beyond the minimum functional level, a luxury? Does getting it right matter?

Comments from readers, writers, editors, and, if any wish to join in, publishers welcome.

© Peter Rozovsky 2011, 2012

New York Times, you're one of us now

For some time now, the clincher in any discussion of declining standards of literacy in American newspaper and book publishing has been "I'm even seeing mistakes in the New York Times." Now I can make the same declaration.

Here at my newspaper, I used to play a little game when reading or editing stories from wire services, including the Times' service. Whenever I'd come to a bit of mangled grammar or an ugly, sloppily executed sentence, I'd think, well, this can't be from the Times, and I'd scroll to the top of my computer screen to verify this. Until recently, I was always right.

Then, a few weeks ago, I edited a story by a Times writer who did not know the difference between nominate and appoint. (Think the difference is academic? Not when the story is about presidential nominations subject to Senate confirmation.)

Today there was this, from the Times' Bill Pennington:

"Last weekend he was talked about in entirely different contexts: to note that McIlroy was almost the same age as Woods was when he won his first major..."

In fact, Rory McIllroy, who won golf’s U.S. Open on Sunday, is not almost the same age as Woods was when he won the 1997 Masters, he's 10 months older. Sure, you can figure out what the Times meant, but not so long ago that extra step would have been unnecessary. The Times' reporters knew what they meant and the right words to say it, and if they didn't, its copy editors were good enough or given enough time to fix the mistake. No longer.

The Times is still better written than many newspapers, though it's not as good as the Wall Street Journal or the Economist. It's probably also a better source of news than most, so you won't be clueless if you read it. As for me, though, I'll have to find a new game to play at work.

© Peter Rozovsky 2011

Ten Lays That Shook the World

I've been writing about John Lawton's novel A Little White Death, whose plot includes a scandal similar to the Profumo Affair of 1963, a sex-and-spies caper that contributed to the downfall of a government in the United Kingdom.

At the same time, Adrian McKinty has written about Iris Robinson (left), a Northern Ireland politician whose hot pants he suggests could derail the peace process there.

(That Iris Robinson is a born-again Christian who has railed against homosexuality and proclaimed that "the government has the responsibility to uphold God's laws" makes her own downfall especially delicious. Robinson has said she has been treated for mental illness. If she's telling the truth, I wish her well. I am also suspicious about the timing of her revelation, since she has also been linked to financial scandals, and mental illness, like addiction, is a convenient excuse for politicians caught with their hands in the till or other places where they don't belong.

(One of McKinty's comments also includes a well-deserved slap at the New York Times which, in a desperate grab for both relevance and snob appeal, takes a gratuitous shot at bloggers and "local newspaper headlines" for their coverage of the Robinsons' affair. We at the Times, reporter John F. Burns as much as sneers, would never descend to the level of "local" newspapers.)

I'll invoke Lawton's novel to claim this post's relevance to international crime fiction. And I'll ask your help: What are the most influential sex scandals in history? Extra credit for scandals that do not involve conservative politicians.

© Peter Rozovsky 2010

Donald Westlake dies

Donald Westlake, one of the world's liveliest, funniest and most prolific crime writers, died New Year's Eve. He was 75.

Westlake wrote around 100 novels, virtually inventing the comic caper with his Dortmunder series and the amoral, professional thief/killer in twenty-seven novels featuring Parker, written under the pen name Richard Stark.

Westlake was also a screenwriter, and his screenplay for The Grifters earned an Academy Award nomination in 1991. He won three Edgar awards from the Mystery Writers of America, which named him a Grand Master in 1993

Westlake was one of the cleverest of crime novelists, engaging in such experiments as beginning two different novels with the same botched robbery in order to take the story in two different directions. He also liked to share chapters with authors whose work he enjoyed, a Westlake novel and a book by the cooperating author having a common chapter that features characters from both. He did this notably in the Dortmunder novel Drowned Hopes, which shares a chapter with Joe Gores' 32 Cadillacs, a delicious treat for anyone, doubly so for readers who know both writers.

The New York Times obituary of Westlake, by the way, is a shoddy piece of work, full of what the writer probably thought was delightful color ("who pounded out more than 100 books and five screenplays") but not mentioning Dortmunder, one of the author's two most influential and enduring creations. The obituary also makes the questionable assertion that Westlake's work translated well to the screen. The Dortmunder novels especially have been notoriously ill-served by screen adaptations.

(A knowledgeable observer of both crime fiction and journalism points out that the Times was likely caught unaware by Westlake's death. With a holiday schedule likely in effect, the Times had to draft a non-obituary writer and non-crime-fiction expert. But my correspondent also expressed surprise that the Times did not have an obituary ready in advance, as it should have and as newspapers traditionally do. Westlake was 75, he was extremely well known, especially in New York, and he had had health problems in recent years, though not apparently related to the heart attack that appears to have killed him. The Times dropped the ball on this one. )

© Peter Rozovsky 2009