Friday, January 15, 2010

Dad finds a winner in the Washington Post

My father, a resident of Virginia, is a voracious reader of newspapers. He loves his newspaper delivered and in hard copy. But he is also one of the best copy editors I have ever known. Some people have that copy editor's eye, the one that catches the smallest detail, and others don't.

My Dad has that eye.

But it didn't take too much detail to discover the mistake he found in this police brief in the Washington Post:

"Here's another reason why I look forward to reading the morning paper. There is a brief news item in the Post this morning about a woman being hit by a dump truck while standing on the side of the road near Leesburg.

The second paragraph identified the woman as Martha Johnson, 45, of Leesburg who left her vehicle. Paragraph five states, The woman's identity is being withheld pending notification of her family. If her family reads the Washington Post, they've got the identity information already!"

Been there, done that.

2 comments:

Dave Forsmark said...

Did your dad catch the extremely odd use of "hangfire" in the Flint Journal's 4584th worshipful editorial about Dan Kildee on Wednesday? Or does he only read real newspapers?

Pam said...

Go Uncle Lee! Keep 'em on their toes! (oops. are we withholding his name?)