Saturday, April 15, 2006

WKBW.com

Local News - Bills Stadium Lease

NOTE: Yes, I sent this out. No, I do not feel like a badass for doing so.

To whom it may concern:

This may sound trite, especially since WKBW runs a TV channel first and a website second. Still, I feel compelled to complain about the quality of writing in your site's articles. After using your RSS feeds for several weeks I've noticed too many grammar, punctuation, and spelling errors. For example, in one article the author refers to "Bill's owner" Ralph Wilson, who never let anyone see "the Bills books." In this case I say "anyone" because the full sentence says: "Debenedetti says Wilson came to the county for money but when he was never permitted to see the Bills books." What does that even mean? Everybody makes writing mistakes, but this is frustrating.

Other pages are just as lazily thrown together. Another article states that "Giambra says this Buffalo Creek Casino was code for a poor people's casino. He believes it will pray on people who live in this community." A few prayers could only do some good for those poor folks. You make it seem like a bad thing!

Please employ someone to proofread your work; until then I will look elsewhere for local news.

NOTE: After I sent this out, their site responded:
Your mail has been successfully sent, Thanks for your message.
They really don't care, do they?

1 comment:

jeff said...

Haha. Do you remember when I used to always send comments like yours to WTHITV.com in Terre Haute? My favorite is still the headline "sketch released of Amber Alert suspect" that didn't actually link to the sketch.

When you start writing these people, it's a losing battle. WTHITV never responded to me. Eventually, I found a better solution: I stopped watching TV news and stopped going to their web sites. I'm sure, though, that Katie Couric will save TV news . . .

"And now let's go to Ann at the news desk."
"Ms. Couric, you are at the news desk."
"Would it be okay if I took the microphone outside and spent the next 15 minutes talking to my fans? Some of them need to wish their mothers happy birthday."

Back to my original comment . . . In most cases, I think these sites just post the story exactly as it appears on their teleprompters during the newscast. Personally, I would think that would give all the more reason that they proofread the stuff, since they'd sound less confused and look less cross-eyed during the news.

"I'm Ron Burgundy?"