From The Eagle-Tribune (and no, I had nothing to do with the headline): http://www.eagletribune.com/news/stories/20040527/SP_001.htm Tomorrow, we'll have a comparison of Adu's media profile to that of Wayne Rooney, whom Everton totally sheltered when he became a teen phenom.
What do you think Tim, are these simple but extremely unprofessional editorial mistakes, are do they actually mess it up on purpose? You already know what I think... I don't suppose they ran a picture of him squinting and with his tongue hanging out too, did they?
Well, it's absolutely ridiculous to think that they mess it up on purpose ... especially in this case, because misspelling someone's name -- especially the name of someone famous -- only makes the newspaper look stupid. I know you and I have had this debate before, but you don't realize how foolish you sound by suggesting that a media outlet would purposely spell a 14-year-old kid's name wrong out of some anti-soccer bias. Once, a non-sports fan on the news staff put "RED SOCKS WIN" or something to that effect in a blurb atop Page 1. That wasn't a piece of a vast anti-baseball conspiracy; the person just didn't have a clue about sports and assumed "Sox" was spelled "Socks". You ranted and railed against an unflattering picture the Globe repeatedly ran of a Revs coach (Clavijo? Nicol? I forget...), but the most embarrassing mug in Globe sports history was one they always used of Ray Bourque. He looked like the dumbest caveman in the Remedial Club-Swinging class. Boston's a hockey town, Bourque was beloved universally admired at the time -- it wasn't a plot to undermine the NHL. As for the example at hand, I should clarify: We have a new Web site generator that, for some absurd reason, takes whatever is sent to our pagination (i.e., layout) system and automatically throws it onto the Web. "Abu" was mistakenly typed into our word processing system and sent to pagination, but it was NEVER wrong in the newspaper itself. Someone caught the error, like we catch hundreds of errors, and everything was cool. If you get a copy of Thursday's Eagle-Tribune (or today's Salem News, Newburyport Daily News or Gloucester Times), you'll see a huge soccer story front and center on the Sports front page, with a big photo of Freddy and his name spelled just perfectly. It's the furthest thing from an attempt to rip your beloved sport. But on the Web, this new system just swallows up the earlier edition and slaps it online. There's very little human input. Needless to say, I don't like it. But that's not my decision.
Damn it Tim, must you shatter my illusions? Thanks for explaining, but it never ceases to amaze me how the perception of soccer in America is manipulated by major media sports editors. It will take just as long for me to start believing they are unbiased, as it has taken them to shed that bias. If only they were half as good at their jobs as the majority of our soccer writers...
Twellman remains cool in drought By Gus Martins Healthy Brown might have to sit By Gus Martins Twellman hasn't kicked into high gear for Revolution By Frank Dell'Apa Soccer prodigy Adu will make first New England visit Saturday AP story Adu set to achieve more By: Aris Ohanessian Much Ado (surprise, surprise, another misspelling...) BY PETER GOBIS
Well, without offering an opinion about whether editors do these things because they're out to get us, I'd say that one may very well be intentional, referring back to Shakespeare and all, especially given that his name is spelled correctly in the article.