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Lazy Journalism


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Step forward Richard Winton (I think your brother Dale would have been a better bet) of the Herald.

 

While defensively they struggled badly any time a ball was delivered into the box from wide, Motherwell's exuberance offered thrilling attacking. Paul McHugh's interval introduction helped link the play and combined with the pace of Jamie Murphy to discomfit the hitherto solid St Johnstone defence, while Steve Jennings was a sparky contributor down the right after replacing Craigan.

 

Easy mistake - confusing Chris Humphrey and Steve Jennings :(

 

Stuart.

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was speaking to the good lady's old man over the holidays who's involved in the junior game. we were talking about the standard of journalism in the game - he was telling me about a guy who used to cover junior matches - who needed to get the team sheets and ensure with club officials that he had spellings of first and second names correct before he filed his report (even though first names weren't on the team sheet).

 

Terry Willoughby (brilliant guy) used to send match reports from the 50's and 60's up for us for the first few issues of the GLF fanzine - those reports were amazing - generally written in a positive light and from start to finish described the events of the match.

 

these days 75% plus is about the politics surrounding players & clubs - 25% is about the events of the match and there's usually an error or two thrown in for good measure. To be fair it's usually a picture of a player with the wrong name underneath it.

 

The disrespect shown to all the clubs outwith the old firm in the scottish media is diplorable. if it were shown to any of the top 10 / 12 teams in England there would be an uproar.

 

FFS how hard is it to be up to speed with 12 football teams???

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Most Scottish football journalists have the challenge of working out who's who at Motherwell these days. But how long would it take to email or phone the likes of Flow?

 

Even the St Johnstone programme editor took the trouble of posting on here to get some low down on our new squad. Maybe we shouldn't use - amateur - in a derogatory fashion.

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Let's face it, the guys who write the Monday reports shouldn't be getting anything like that wrong as the sunday papers and even highlights are available to them.

 

If he has professional pride he should be embarassed and his editor should be pulling him up for it.

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Watching the highlights of the Steaua Bucharest game on Eurosport, the commentator (not sure who it was) referred to Paul Shane throughout the match. We also had Chris Coke (at one point he actually called him Christopher Coke !) and James O'Brien (though to be fair I think JOB is actually listed as James on the SPL squad lists).

 

Point is though - this is what these guys get paid for, so the least you should be expecting is that they get the names correct. So long as it affects the "diddy" teams they'll get away with it. Can you imagine if it was Kris Boyle or Adrian McGeady !

 

Stuart.

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Being a journalist is a very difficult job.

 

More and more newspapers are cutting back staff drastically meaning one man has to do the job that formerly two or three or even four did. Anyone who has been in that situation knows mistakes creep in.

 

If you think the Monday guys had one and a half days to write their reports you'd be very much mistaken. Often journalists have to write three articles a day with strict deadlines. They just don't have time to fact check and clear everything.

 

Standards have fallen badly but like everything else a lot of the problem is because of financial cutbacks.

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It's not difficult to log online to motherwellfc.co.uk and look at the squad list. In fact, you would think it is the sort of thing that a journalist would have to hand, deadline or no deadline. It's lazy and it's shoddy and there is no excuse for it - journalists, after all, are supposed to deal in facts.

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Being a journalist is a very difficult job.

 

More and more newspapers are cutting back staff drastically meaning one man has to do the job that formerly two or three or even four did. Anyone who has been in that situation knows mistakes creep in.

 

If you think the Monday guys had one and a half days to write their reports you'd be very much mistaken. Often journalists have to write three articles a day with strict deadlines. They just don't have time to fact check and clear everything.

 

Standards have fallen badly but like everything else a lot of the problem is because of financial cutbacks.

See that argument might hold if it was just a recent thing but it's been happening for decades so it's not because of cutbacks, it's because they're lazy hacks who don't give two fucks about the accuracy where diddy clubs are concerned cos there's not enough of us to moan about it for them to worry about their job through it.

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Being a journalist is a very difficult job.

 

More and more newspapers are cutting back staff drastically meaning one man has to do the job that formerly two or three or even four did. Anyone who has been in that situation knows mistakes creep in.

 

If you think the Monday guys had one and a half days to write their reports you'd be very much mistaken. Often journalists have to write three articles a day with strict deadlines. They just don't have time to fact check and clear everything.

 

Standards have fallen badly but like everything else a lot of the problem is because of financial cutbacks.

 

Financial cutbacks don't explain a journalist getting names wrong (using the example with which I started this thread) - FFS the names are actually printed on the back of their jerseys and they are supplied with a full team list prior to kick off, confusing Humphrey for Jennings has nothing to do with financial cutbacks and everything to do with lazy and/or poor journalism.

 

As fatcalf points out this has been going on for years, and it's not exclusive to the print media. How often did BBC's website list Steve McGuire (aka McGarry) as one of our players.

 

I'd argue that it is laziness - best example being the recent episode where Neil Cameron in the Daily Record referred to our tie against Llanelli as our first European match in 13 years. I emailed him pointing out we played Nancy in the UEFA Cup last year - and in his reply to me he admitted his mistake while confessing that he had been at the Nancy match ! You couldn't make it up !!

 

Stuart.

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See that argument might hold if it was just a recent thing but it's been happening for decades so it's not because of cutbacks, it's because they're lazy hacks who don't give two fucks about the accuracy where diddy clubs are concerned cos there's not enough of us to moan about it for them to worry about their job through it.

 

 

I'm no sure if I want to comment on this one :P .

 

What I will say is that several of the sports journalists I know do put a lot of work in to get facts right and are far from "lazy". Many reporters at even national papers have to deal with editing other people's stories, deal with page layout and sub editing while writing their own stories, again to tight deadlines. A great deal of care is taken in my experience to get names like details etc correct. I worked for a national paper for over a year as a football reporter and it is easy to make the odd mistake. You don't always get club contacts who are able to help you, which is frustrating to say the least when you know there is something you need clearing up.

 

Edit: in regards to the Steve Maguire (aka McGarry) thing, this was due to the names that PA had down being incorrect that was distributed out to the likes of Teletext, BBC etc. Which magnifies the mistake.

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:O:O:O

 

No wonder Dundee Utd managed to beat the Jambos last night.

 

If you look at the Rancid today at the players scores out of 10 United were playing themselves. It goes through the United team twice with no Jambos mentioned.

 

Surely somebody must be proof reading at a daily newspaper.

 

Dicks

:P

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