Former editor at Gridskipper, Hunter Walker, goes legit, but not

In 2007-2008, Hunter Walker was an assistant editor at Gridskipper. In that capacity, he was possibly the sole editor I’ve written for who sexed up my work rather than made a few strategic deletions (I had no objections).

So what did the future hold for such a depraved blogger?

He’s now enrolled in Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism. And demonstrating that the conflux of old and new media is almost complete, he’s talking about it with The New York Times and blogging about it for Gawker.

Maureen Dowd is a lazy writer

Read a  New York Times’ op-ed writer for a few months and you know what his or her column will say ahead of time.

• Thomas Friedman: Globalization is good and inevitable.
• Nicholas Kristof: Life is miserable in developing countries.
• Bill Kristol: I am wrong about everything.
• Paul Krugman: George W. Bush is bad.
• Bob Herbert: There’s nothing a government program can’t fix.

While Maureen Dowd doesn’t hawk an ideology, she seldom makes sense. She just fires out a slew of zingers; sure, some of them hit, but mostly she makes a mess. Every Dowd column I read has me thinking The Times sacked its copyeditors.

But as I’m a Tiny Fey fan (and who outside of Wasilla isn’t these days?), I read Dowd’s cover article on the comedian in this month’s Vanity Fair. As expected, there are several passages that are great examples of how not to write.

• “Vintage-y Upper West Side apartment”—Tacking a “y” onto the end of a word is the epitome of lazy writing. A minute or two searching a thesaurus probably would have led Dowd to a real word or phrase.
• “Her [Fey's] former S.N.L. pal Colin Quinn”—Were Fey and Quinn once, but no longer, friends? Or is Dowd just referring to the fact that they used to work together? If it’s the former, don’t leave your readers hanging, dish the dirt Dowd. If it’s the latter, “pal” is a lousy word choice; we all have colleagues with whom we aren’t friends.
• “Then she retreated backstage at S.N.L., wore a ski hat, and gained weight writing sharp, funny jokes and eating junk food”—On first read, it sounds as if writing jokes made Fey fat. Writing the fragment as “she gained weight eating junk food while writing sharp, funny jokes” prevents confusion.

I’m not a doctor, but I’m pretty sure Greg Oden isn’t going to miss his rookie season in the NBA

A headline from The New York Times (as of about 10 minutes ago), “Oden Likely to Miss His Rookie Season”:

New York Times: Greg Oden to Miss His Rookie Seaso

I’m no doctor, but I don’t think surgery on the new Portland Trail Blazer’s right knee will cause him to miss his rookie season.

Oden’s rookie season will just be the following year—or whenever he gets around to playing again.

For the record, ESPN.com made the mistake too.

Q: Which “only” is correct in the sentence “Only I only hit only him only in the eye only yesterday only.”

A: It depends.

On her blog, A Capital Idea, Nicole Stockdale, a copy editor at The Dallas Morning News, wrote about the major changes in meaning that a minor change in word placement can cause. She was citing a presentation the director of copy desks for The New York Times, Merrill Perlman, made.

Merill had the perfect example about how the placement of “only” can change the meaning of a sentence. Start with “I hit him in the eye yesterday.” Add the world only in different places and watch how the emphasis changes:

Only I hit him in the eye yesterday. (No one else hit him.)
I only hit him in the eye yesterday. (I also considered slapping and poking.)
I hit only him in the eye yesterday. (I could have hit plenty of others.)
I hit him only in the eye yesterday. (Not in the nose or the mouth.)
I hit him in the eye only yesterday. (Ah, what a day that was.)
I hit him in the eye yesterday only. (Had it been two days in a row, then you could be mad.)

While easy to notice in other people’s writing, word-placement mistakes are difficult to catch when reviewing something you wrote. So often we read our own writing as we meant it, not as it actually appears. Again, having the computer read back your material to you is a great way of catching these kind of mistakes.

Talk to The New York Times about being an uninsured worker

Katie Zezima, a writer with The New York Times, sent me an e-mail this afternoon after reading my post, A freelancer’s perspective on health insurance.

She is writing an article about working people who do not have health insurance and is looking for subjects to interview (thankfully I no longer qualify).

If you, however, are working but uninsured and would like to speak with her, please let me know and I will forward you her contact information.