Monday, December 03, 2012

Cincy | A six-part serial about the 'Granny Robber'

The Cincinnati Enquirer series started yesterday: "It seemed simple enough. She just wanted to help her son. So she robbed a bank."

38 comments:

  1. And it all started on "a dark and stormy night . . ."

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  2. "a conversation not unlike that many American families face, of where to set boundaries for offspring, how to face conflict rather than avoid it, how to talk to each other and how to say what needs to be said."

    Is this supposed to be a satire?

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  3. "the seeds of her undoing were sown..."

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  4. The first-day lede alone looks like something from one of my freshman students.

    "Pulling her red Chevy Cobalt up to a pump - $6,084 from her robbery of the Mason Peoples Building & Loan on the seat beside her - the 68-year-old housewife and grandmother got out to fill her tank as a pack of wailing police cruisers roared by."

    Plenty of problems with it, but this will make a great classroom example of bloating a lede with details that can artfully be introduced in subsequent paragraphs.

    Where were the editors?

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  5. Newshole must be pathetically tight if they're trying to milk that cow for 6 days.

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  6. Sloppy as hell reporting. I'm from Dayton and can tell you it's Fairmont High School, not Fairmount as this story says. Also Winters Bank, not "Winter's" with apostrophe. (Founded by Valentine Winters.) Guess those editors don't fact check either!

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  7. They've disabled comments on it. I can see why. lol

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  8. I was curious about this series after following the tremendous hype by Washburn in preceding days. So I read Page 1 with some interest Sunday and was absolutely flabbergasted at that bloated, amateur lede. Why stack up all those extraneous details and render the first sentence almost unreadable? I stopped reading at the jump and have no intention of reading another word of this series. We all remember this woman's case, so what is compelling enough to compel a reader to want to read six days of this tripe?

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  9. I don't see what's so "bloated" about that lede. Successful Gannettoids understand that today's readers have short spans of attention. If you're going to show your students that paragraph, you should test them on their comprehension of Barbara Joly's actions.

    What did Barbara Joly realize?

    (SHE WAS ALMOST OUT OF GAS.)

    After that realization, where did she pull her red Chevy Cobalt?

    (UP TO A PUMP.)

    After pulling up to a pump, why did the 68-year-old housewife and grandmother - with $6,804 from her her robbery of the Mason Peoples Building & Loan on the seat beside her - get out?

    TO FILL HER TANK.


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  10. Today's cliffhanger is that Granny Robber just discovered she's infertile.

    Four days to go!!!!

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  11. This is Carolyn's plan to win a Pulitzer. Seriously.

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  12. And we all remember the last time the Enquirer set out to win a Pulitzer.

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  13. This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.

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  14. Will they be correcting the mistakes in the story on line and adding the son's criminal background, or is that considered too professional in Schoolmarmville?

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  15. Granny Robber found out she can't have kids???? I can't wait to find out what happens next!

    The story did say she's "infatuated with children."

    "Infatuated"?

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  16. 11:00 AM, I'll bet they quietly correct the errors online - without noting, naturally, that changes were made in the original story - but I'll be surprised if they run a print correction.

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  17. So regardless of the typos and incorrect facts, this was a compelling story. I read it all the way through and I'm the skimmer in the family. My wife practically begged me for the paper when I was done so she could read it. It was good storytelling!

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  18. Glad you liked it, Perry.

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  19. Don't blame the editors. This writer has a history of informing the underlings that every word she writes is golden and they are not to tamper with perfection.

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  20. It could have been a decent one-day centerpiece. Instead, this monstrosity tells you plenty about the Enquirer. Arrogance, inattention to detail, overwritten copy carelessly edited, and a strutting egomaniac who runs the show and thinks it's all good.

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  21. Does The Cincy Enquirer have any copy editors left? You wouldn't know by reading it.

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  22. You're right 12:11. I remember instances when this writer exploded if the desk touched a word of her copy -- even if her word was flat-out wrong. You can't reason with these types. But the bosses love them.

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  23. This has "Best of Gannett" written all over it.

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  24. As a former copy editor who had been beaten up too many times for making corrections, my solution was to write the cutlines and headlines, spell-check and ship it through. After all, that's what management really wanted -- isn't it?

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  25. I'm glad I don't work in Cincinnati. You people there are ugly to descend on a colleague like this.

    Luckily, your attacks are so juvenile and knee-jerk that the only thing they reveal is your own lack of self-worth.

    Seriously, give the writer some respect for reporting something beyond the abilities of almost everyone here commenting. You should be ashamed. Ugly venomous crap.

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  26. They used to have a pretty sharp desk until the last of the really good ones got laid off, bought out or chased off. It wouldn't matter anyway. This is a writer who gets hundreds of column inches for a story like this. She and Washburn wouldn't stand for anyone challenging their brilliance.

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  27. 1:21, I'm glad you don't believe in attacking colleagues or posting ugly venomous crap. Can you spell "irony"?

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  28. 1:21: If you worked in Cincinnati, you'd understand. Years of bad management will do that to a staff.

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  29. I don't work there, 2:18, but it's very clear that the management is abysmal.

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  30. Let's hope someone makes the needed corrections on line, although judging by past comments, the on line crew is asleep half the time. On the other hand, a series that took this long to craft should have had better quality control on the desk.

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  31. As I recall it only took them ten or eleven hours to remove their election day report that had Romney ahead by 92,000 votes before any votes were counted.

    It'll be interesting to see if there's a print correction tomorrow. Some Enquirer "storytellers" are exempt from those.

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  32. >>1:21: If you worked in Cincinnati, you'd understand. Years of bad management will do that to a staff.<<

    No I wouldn't. I've worked at plenty of crappy places with very bad bosses. But I would never think of posting the crap that's been posted here. YOU are the problem, not any deficiencies (and I'm sure ithere are plenty), above you.

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  33. 3:54 you are so critical of other people. Tsk.

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  34. I worked in Cincy, truly bad management. And it only getting worse.

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  35. 3:05, your comment shows a good deal of ignorance. If you equate "taking a long time to craft" with the desk having a lot of time to review the series, then either you don't understand the standard editing process, or you are having trouble writing coherently.

    Do you mean the line editors should have taken better care? Then that's what you should write. If you don't mean that, then you are confused about how things like this get handled.

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  36. Time for more furloughs and layoffs.

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  37. The series was in the works for how long?
    How many editors did it go through?
    Did no copy editor carch any of these mistakes, deadline or no deadline?

    Granted, the first line of defense is on the columnist. But making the poor, overworked copyeditor excuse doesnt fly here. The Enquirer has a bad enough reputation from the top down. This doesnt enhance anything. Accept the fact that mistakes got through and move on. Take some pride in your work, whomever you are.

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  38. Whoever. That editor is weak on grammar too. Another who/whom error here - "But in 2008, Barbara Joly’s desperation to rescue her debt-ridden son - whom she believed was depressed and suicidal - "

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