The New Republic: Your New Source for Sportswriting Excellence
I guess all I'd say to ex-student-radical and grumpy old person John B. Judis is this: if you want to write a mean-spirited and comically trivial critique of The Post's sports section that indicts us for, among other things, sloppy grammar, these are a few things you might not want to do.
1) Confuse affect and effect, to wit: "were they effected by the hometown crowd?"
2) Make random mistakes, to wit: friends "sometimes tell me how lucky I am to have to hometown paper like The Washington Post."
3) Confuse plural and singular twice in one sentence, to wit: the Maryland football team's win put "THEM in line for the conference CHAMPIONSHIPS." (And later, twice refer to Wake Forest as a plural entity, which I suppose is how it's done in Britain, but not, typically, over here.)
4) Drop random words, to wit: the story "states obvious and elaborates it with hollow quotes."
5) Drop more random words, to wit: "the ball began to bound into end zone."
6) Write a wretched clause like this: "...The Washington Post devotes exactly one passing sentence toward the end to it." (The end? The end of what? And what's "it?" The subject of a sentence that appeared two sentences above? Is that how you'd like us to write? Is that what Strunk and White recommend?)
7) Make a bizarre claim like this: Florida State is "resurgent" because of one home win over a terrible Virginia team. (Find me the sports minds that believe Florida State is "resurgent" because of that win.)
8) Make a borderline factual mistake, to wit: that Maryland won the game over Clemson on a field goal with three seconds left. There was no time left on the clock when Ennis made that field goal. If you meant Maryland attempted that field goal with three seconds left, you could have said so.
Now obviously, I'm just picking extremely easy nits, albeit with a writer who likely faced a considerably less onerous deadline than we inept Washington Post scribes deal with on a daily basis. (Marc Carig's deadline for last night's Terps game story: two seconds after the final buzzer. Literally.) And obviously, Judis's main beef is not with our bad grammar, but with our leaving certain details out of one game story, like how Maryland officials would respond to a spotty officiating decision. (Answer: call the ACC offices and complain, like they always do in these cases, a process that inevitably results in some sort of nothing and maybe a newspaper story, an explanation which presumably would have filled Judis with love and understanding.) Still, I'm just sayin'.
P.S.: Johnny boy, I used several adverbs in that last graf. Writing instructors often disapprove of the use of adverbs. Maybe that can be your next post, offering further evidence as to why you'd prefer almost any paper to your hometown rag (and its blogging subsidiaries). Seriously fella, go around this great country and read every sports section in every town, and then convince me that you'd prefer almost any of them to our humble daily offering. Hogwash.
By Dan Steinberg |
November 8, 2006; 11:14 AM ET
| Category:
Media
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Posted by: Unsilent Majority | November 8, 2006 11:26 AM
Nice job. There's something about a glass house that I think would be apropos, but I just can't quite think of it right now.
Posted by: Goat | November 8, 2006 11:42 AM
Rule No. 1 of the Impassioned Philipic: Always read, read again and read one more time what you write. When you become enraged and sit down at the computer to spill your thoughts into cyber space, you must edit your text. You become so inflamed with enmity that you have a tendency to commit grevious grammatical sins. Every tap of the keyboard may be cathartic, but every error you produce only makes you look more foolish.
Posted by: Colin | November 8, 2006 11:49 AM
Oh, and because I didn't mention this in my earlier post, Judis is full of crap. And I know. That comment isn't very constructive. But seriously, the Post offers up some of the best sports coverage in the entire nation. Keep up the good work. I couldn't ask for anything more. Except maybe a job ...
Posted by: Colin | November 8, 2006 11:57 AM
I have problems with the editorial focus of the sports section and haven't been consistently impressed by any columnist's work therein for a long time. It isn't where I turn for insight, as the specialized publications and New Media consistently outshine the published Post in this regard. That said, I wouldn't suggest that the writing or reporting in the section is an issue; I would describe it as world-elite. And of course, I love the Bog.
Posted by: false_cause | November 8, 2006 12:30 PM
Dan Steinberg: Surly Sports Bogger.
Speaking of which you ought to do an update about the surly speedskater.
Posted by: Kim | November 8, 2006 12:45 PM
Dan izz gud. Michael Wilbon and teh Wizuds ritahs izz gud 2.
Posted by: Eric | November 8, 2006 12:53 PM
Did you get permission from Tony Kornheiser to make a written attempt at humor? Isn't it his job to attempt to write 14 words a week that at most 1 person thinks is funny?
Also, Wilbon is in charge of sports-related self rightous indignation with a side racial morality. So BUTT OUT.
That's the WashPost sports section. Wilbon on morality and a Kornheiser by-line.
Posted by: Andy Dufresne | November 8, 2006 01:22 PM
I know Judis' post would be a pretentious, whining rant the moment he referred to the Post's "sport" section.
Posted by: Baron Scicluna | November 8, 2006 01:26 PM
Dan, before you get your underwear in a twist, I must say that I have read the Post sports section for eight years. And the quality of the basic editing has indeed decreased the last year and a half or so.
As some people in my former newsroom at college might have said, "VVPTS." If you don't know what that means, ask Frey, Grunwald, Glasser, Hsu, or Paley.
Posted by: Snarky Grammarian | November 8, 2006 01:41 PM
Do you have specific examples, Snarky Grammarian, or are you merely the usual anonymous commentor who spews opinion without a shred of factual evidence?
Posted by: Doug | November 8, 2006 02:32 PM
Dear Douglas, keeper of the flame:
I have seen pagination errors, jump cuts to the wrong pages, teasers that lead nowhere ... shall I continue?
Or, you can go to the "corrections" section of some daily papers and laugh out loud.
Posted by: Snarky Grammarian | November 16, 2006 10:06 AM
The comments to this entry are closed.
The New Republic? Did they accuse more Hollywood Jews of ruining the world? maybe that's just Easterbrook's thing.