Irene Epstein was a fiery red-headed associate professor of journalism at San Jose State College in California in the 1960s and ’70s. She had one rule that she never let her news writing students forget:
“The worst mistake a journalist can make is misspelling someone’s name. How would you like it if the newspaper misspelled your name?”
And to ram home her point she had a cardinal rule in all of her news writing exercises. “You can write the greatest prose ever but misspell someone’s name and you get 0 out of 10 points for that exercise. No excuses accepted.”
Link via Follow the Media
Our penpushers commit still grave mistakes and get away with it. Who cares if few readers complain about it.