Friday, November 14, 2003

Eye Spy

Yesterday, eye weekly went after 24 hours:

Though it's less than two weeks old, we're ready to declare 24 hours the worst-edited paper in Toronto. The gang of five old men hired by Sun Media to target women with the new free commuter daily have reached depths of incompetence unrivalled by any publication we know of -- high school newsletters and church bulletins included.

It's difficult to even see the crap-lite content through the fog of innaccuracies [sic] and errors: Sarah McLachlan becomes "Mclahlan," and model Iman becomes "Inman" on the cover; a story about the Dixie Chicks is illustrated with a photo of Naomi Judd; one piece about IBM runs twice in the same issue, with differing typos; the headline "Church to aid molestation victims" runs over a story about a US soldier refusing to serve in the army.

It's difficult to judge the most colossal of
24 hours' errors, but our money's on the screw-up so nice they made it twice. On Nov. 5, a story headlined "Literary faces pull for Miller" reported that various writers had declared support for John Tory (the headline had it right: they supported Miller). The next day, an incorrect correction tried to clarify by affirming "It's Tory, not Miller." Finally, on Nov. 7 (like the proverbial monkeys banging out Hamlet), the rag printed the correct information.

Difficult not to take some schadenfreude from such sublime incompetence. (Although eye did spell "innaccuracies" inaccurately.)

In other news, I (finally) watched Escape from the Newsroom last night. Disappointing, save for Jim Walcot insisting that terrorists flew planes into the WTC on "October 11." However, I did get to see some television commercials, something of a rarity for me (I haven’t had a teevee for about three years). Two things:

1) Why did K-Mart decide to re-write Right Here, Right Now by Jesus Jones (the thinking man’s EMF) and make it their theme song and trademarked slogan? More importantly, why didn’t I hear about this sooner?

2) That car commercial with all the Mega-Blocks is cool. It’s no White Stripes video, but it’s nifty regardless.