Wednesday, November 23, 2005

Who's Editing?

EDIT: the Tribune's news story editing problems described in this post have now been fixed.

There was a bad train accident this evening in Elmwood Park, Illinois. The AP story describes this town as being 14 miles northwest of Chicago. I don't think so. It shares a border with Chicago! I can forgive the Associated Press for getting this wrong, but the same misleading info shows up in the Chicago Tribune's version of the story.

I did an experiment. I went to Yahoo Maps, and asked for driving directions from Chicago to Elmwood Park. Yes, it told me the distance was 14 miles. They had me starting from an obscure location - Lumber Street on the South Side - not even from downtown. And the 14 miles consists of the fastest route - not the shortest route.

Send an investigative reporter
To locate the common border!

UPDATE: I emailed them and told them to fix it. Now they have 14 miles northwest of DOWNTOWN Chicago. That's still not quite right, but it's better. I guess I'll email them again. Yes, I did work as a reporter in Chicago one summer. The Sun-Times story does NOT have that erroneous 14. Someone there was paying attention.

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