RE: Automatic editing?

["Al Geist" <al -dot- geist -at- geistassociates -dot- com>]

Peter Neilson wrote:
<Thirty-1 ??? How did they accomplish that? Whaddya bet that as a
TV station, they're not putting much effort into editing for good
journalistic writing. So they have a smell-checker that tries to
apply some AP Style Guide rules: (a) Numbers from 1 to 10 are spelled
out, and everything else is in digits. (b) Sentences do not begin with
numbers in digits. Applying both rules at once gives amazing results.>


One of my past lives was that of a broadcast reporter in a small market. I
discovered that not all broadcast reporters have Journalism degrees, nor or
they versed in English, geography, or much of anything else. Some are chosen
just 'cause they look good on TV. I worked with an anchor that doubled as
the weather reporter. One day she was talking about a snow storm in Utah
while pointing at California (she could see where she was pointing on a
monitor set off screen). When I asked her if she knew where Utah was, she
didn't have a clue. Her copy was also riddled with typos, etc., which was
accepted because all the anchors did was read the news.

Larger stations are probably not that much different except the pay is
better.

Al Geist
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