I can’t believe my tired old eyes. Someone please verify this for me. Has the Antigo Daily Journal actually changed its ways, or has Fred Berner accidentally hired someone who can actually write?
Check out this story, “A mix of court cases heard here, bonds set for sex, drug crimes”, on page 3 of the March 10 issue of ADJ. It is a rare gem in the history of the ADJ – a well-written example of good small-town newspaper reporting of local court cases. I am, quite frankly, stunned!
Gone are the and-, but-, when-, as-, and after-splices the ADJ favors for patching sentences together. Instead, we are presented with paragraph after paragraph of well-constructed sentences, each standalone and separated from the next sentence by… ta-dah! … a period! Well, almost gone. There is one and-splice, in paragraph seven, in the sentence beginning, “According to a criminal complaint…”, but it’s a forgivable exception instead of the usual egregious chain of grammatical offenses.
Also missing are the awkward participles and disjointed dependent clauses we have come to know and love. And what’s with this using “police” instead of “local law enforcement officials”? And how about someone who “drove his car into a ditch” instead of the usual “reports suggested that he was at the wheel of a vehicle which entered a ditch”?
This is amazing. I can’t believe Fred hates me so much that he would go to the extreme measure of hiring someone who knows how to write, just to deprive me of grist for my curmudgeonly mill. Apparently, my work here is done, and I can now move on to solve other profound problems, like ridding the world of the tobacco industry.
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Whoops…. Looks like I was too quick with my praise. The improvement in writing at the ADJ seems to have been a temporary aberration. Saturday, March 13, page two, “Drugs are fake but charges are real for man who skipped out with cash” shows the same old bad writing style the ADJ has been inflicting on its suffering readers lo these many years. Look up the story for yourself, to appreciate the awfulness. I’ll give you just one quote, to show what you’re in for:
“Test results indicated that the substance was negative for the substance.”
And back to the positive side…. Fred told me today that the author of the March 10 article on which I lavished kudos was Debbie Igl. My congratulations to Debbie for showing how the job should be done!
(About the “Fred told me” clause: Yes, when I stop by the ADJ office every once in a while, Fred and I do have discussions, face-to-face in fact! Not quite eye-to-eye, first because we don’t really see eye-to-eye, and second because Fred won’t look me in the eye while we’re talking. When I offered him a printed version of this blog, he said, “I don’t look at that!” But he took it anyway, I assume to show to Debbie… but perhaps not.)
Back to the negative side…. ADJ’s quality is slip-sliding away, again. On the March 22 “Commentary” page (ADJ has no Editorial Page, for obvious reasons), a heartfelt appreciation in the letters column (What People Say, “Newspaper, people thanked for start of Moose Lake drive”) goes down the page to the continuation note, “See Letter, Page 5″. You guessed it — there is no “Letter” on page 5, or any other page for that matter.
In the same issue, the police blotter story “Unlicensed driver was also impaired”, on page 3, is full of the same kind of crap he Antigo Daily Journal has been running for years before Debbie Igl came along. The only worthwhile thing in the whole issue was the Culver’s coupon for “Buy 1 get 1 FREE” on the Double ButterBurger. They were delicious. Thanks, Fred!
So, now the ADJ corrects its boneheaded error… after a fashion. The March 23 issue repeats the entire “Newspaper, people thanked for start of Moose Lake drive” letter, this time with a jump to page 7, where we can actually find the letter’s last paragraph! Amazing. Full page length, double-column width, editorial position, on the editorial page, no mention of it being a repeat or being originally screwed-up, just reprint the whole works. Other newspapers like to use that space and position for editorial comment on issues of importance to their readers. But the ADJ can use it to gloss over their ineptness by pretending it never happened… again.
What’s next? Look for the next issue of Family PrimeTime insert to repeat Stacy Bula’s plagiarized article with an end-of-article tagline, “Thanks to Susan Brown for her help on this article.”
Headline, March 24, page 2:
“Justices Breyer, Scalia explain why they offen disagree on Supreme Court”
It should be obvious why I offen disagree with the ADJ’s approach to the English language. You don’t offen see such glaring mistakes in real newspapers, though you offen see them in the Antigo Daily Journal. I guess that means the ADJ is not a real newspaper, based on the evidence offen provided by Fred Berner and his merry crew.
Just brought to my attention, from February 18, http://www.antigodailyjournal.com/full.php?id=10146
“According to reports, a sheriff’s deputy stopped his vehicle based on information it had been swerving across Highway 45 and had nearly caused an accident. The arresting officer advised that he watched the auto cross the center line at least twice while in the process of being stopped. In that case, he had a blood alcohol level of .20 percent.”
If you ask me, it’s a darned good thing the sheriff’s deputy stopped his vehicle. Whoever told the deputy his vehicle had been swerving should get a reward! And somebody ought to check into that deal about either the sheriff’s deputy or the arresting officer having a blood alcohol level of .20 percent! That’s two-and-a-half times the limit for driving, never mind carrying a loaded weapon. Was the vehicle actually swerving, or was that just the way it looked to the loaded officer? Loaded weapons might be all right, but we have to draw the line at loaded officers!
Thank goodness we have the Antigo Daily Journal on the job, reporting these derelictions of duty, or derelicting these reports of duty, or whatever it is that the ADJ does.
Good Lord. I cannot believe that they pay people to write articles like this. It’s actually a little sad. If they are aspiring to become a journalist at a more respectable news outlet, they may think this work is dignified as being a step in the right direction.
I’m not so sure about the “pay” thing, Gussy. It’s not at all clear who pays whom, and for what. Take a look at the “Family Primetime” insert, and see if you can figure what’s an advertisement and what’s actually reporting. And who gets the money for a plagiarized article?
The Antigo Daily Journal is a member of the Wisconsin Newspaper Association and presumably gets their newsletter. At least, he included some alleged humor from the WNA newsletter in a “Bits and Pieces” feature a month or so ago, without attributing the source. I wonder if Fred saw this announcement by the WNA at http://www.wnanews.com/n-news/article.asp?id=151 for a conference on “New journalism – new ethics?” at UW Madison on April 30. I notice he is not listed among the conference panelists.
I agree about the bad writing and the many typos. Another thing, every time you open to the sports page, alas, another amazing bowler. Give me a break. Same names over and over; these really aren’t athletes. They’re just people that spend a lot of time in the bowling alleys and the the bar there. Give the space to the high school kids who deserve the recognition for their short-lived high school athletice careers. Thats what the sportspage should be for, and, of course, the college and professional athletics, or lets not forget the kids involved in summer sports. I am so tired of seeing these so-called athletes getting their name in bold everytime they bowl a high game or series.
Yeah, it’s kinda like something out of The Onion, isn’t it? You almost expect the Antigo Daily Journal to run something like:
Local man fails to get strike!
Last night, famed local bowler Jack Filbrandt rolled the ball down the alley at North Star Lanes and failed to get the expected strike.
“It was the damnedest thing I’ve ever seen!” exclaimed the disappointed Filbrandt. “The ball hit the pins, things were flying all over the place, and when the splinters settled down, there were the seven and ten pins still standing there, like they were glued to the alley!”
Other bowlers clustered around in amazement, shocked to see the two pins still standing after such a mighty blow to the 1-3 pocket. Local law enforcement officials are investigating, as the event was totally unexpected, as Filbrandt will usually leave only the 9-pin standing, as his 1-3 hit typically takes the 3-pin too heavy on the left.
Not having a record of the historic event, Fred Berner was called in to exercise his photographic expertise, whereupon he shot a picture of the front entrance to the building where the historic event occurred after he arrived on the scene.