You guessed it! The Antigo Daily Journal continues its unbroken
streak of victories in the Albus Bad Writing Award competition. The
winner for 2009 is “Troubling times for a few local residents”, Oct. 28,
2009 posted for your enjoyment and amazement at
http://www.antigodailyjournal.com/full.php?id=9470
Don’t be so distracted by the high-frequency use of “and-”, “but-”,
and “after-” splices in this sorry excuse for a newspaper article that
you miss out on “commotion erupted”, “following several tense
moments in that community”, “As to”, “was advised”, dedicated
use of passive voice, and all the other wince-inducing ineptitudes
in this piece.
If you think it would be hard to top that dazzling assault on
journalistic standards, you would be underestimating the depth of
bad writing talent at the ADJ. Contenders for the 2010 award are
beginning to line up for recognition. For instance, “Fire inspection
team is checking Blackjack ruins” (Feb. 5, 2010 front page)
contains this gem of unjournalistic excess:
“A team of professional fire inspectors from across Wisconsin were
driving those cars and trucks in the parking lot, and they were taking
the interior of the club apart, piece-by-piece in a bid to find a cause
for the pricey fire that may have ended nearly a century of fine dining, friendship and perhaps — just perhaps — a good dose of revelry at the corner of Forest Avenue and South Superior Street.”
That’s right folks — that’s all one sentence, preserved for your
admiration at
http://www.antigodailyjournal.com/full.php?id=10062 in
case you thought I just made that up on my own.
Where do we go from here? The sky’s the limit. From “Melee injures
two at Antigo home, man jailed” (Feb 2) we have:
“Police got notice of the feud at 5:55 p.m. and the first reports of the
fight suggested something very bad had occurred as there were
statements that a man’s ear was “almost bitten off” and another
man was bleeding heavily.”
Not too shabby: two “and-” splices, an “as-” splice, an ambiguous
“there were statements”, and a report that “suggested something
very bad had occurred”, all in just 39 badly-chosen words.
As to the future awards, we were advised after perusing indications
after finding the paper walking down the street, when we were
professionally scrutinizing suggestions as to continued publication
of something bad occurring in the community and reports of the
altter occurred in the former after editing which never occurred we
will just have to wait and see and be looking.
—-
Another entry for 2010′s award was just submitted by a helpful reader. The story is “Antigo woman jail after fight with boyfriend” in the Jan. 27 ADJ. The most attention-getting sentence is:
“He fled from police and after being chased down, police learned he was wanted on warrants from Marathon County and the Department of Corrections.”
How about that? You have to chase police down before you can teach them anything. I think the ADJ itself could benefit from supervision by the Department of Grammatical Corrections.
I agree: I see typos and misprints in the ADJ all the time. And to think we pay for that sloppy writing. Then they get the kids names wrong on the sports page and put in “certain” people over and over again. There are kids out there not getting recognition for their achievements and others who are being bragged up for every little thing they do. Of course, the coaches in some sports aren’t any better; maybe they’re giving the credit to the wrong kids. Also, ADJ seems to lean heavily toward the republican side of every political issue. It’s an opinion paper, not a NEWSpaper. Oh, well, back to the subject; they could use a new proofreader.
Here’s help for ADJ:
http://www.editorsoftware.com/plain-english/writing-examples/editorial-news-writing-example.html
Of course, the software may crash and burn if it got fed ADJ articles, but it would be worth a try. It only costs $160, and Fred’s stashed away all that money he’s never had to spend for real writing talent, so it should be just pocket change to him.