By Jon
As I was reading Ryan’s post on Jonny Flynn yesterday, I nearly died when I read this line…
- Flynn’s hometown paper had great coverage of the Draft, with sports editor Tim Schmitt making the trip to New York City to cover the proceedings. The entire front page of the paper was dedicated to Flynn, and this article was pretty strong. Schmitt and the Gazette have been following Flynn since middle school, so it’s a great place to gain some perspective on what happened last night.
I was certainly pleased and pleasantly surprised that Schmitt made the trip to the Big Apple, and I was glad to hear the Gazette gave the front page to Flynn when it seemed like the entire world was swept up with the loss of a certain gloved one.
But let’s take a look at what happened with Schmitt’s lead article in the sports section of the Lockport-Union Sun and Journal, the Gazette’s sister paper under the Grand Niagara Newspapers umbrella, on Friday:
NEW YORK — We knew they were special times. It’s the magnitude we never grasped.
A team that first dominated the Niagara Frontier League, then a power-packed independent schedule got its ultimate validation on Thursday at Madison Square Garden’s WaMu Theater when not one, but two former Niagara Falls High School basketball stars were taken in the 2009 NBA Draft.
Ouch. Forget copy editors, a circus monkey with a typewriter could have caught that whopper of a mistake.
Obviously, Mr. Schmitt was on a tight deadline (the article later mentions as of press time, Flynn’s teammate Paul Harris had yet to be selected), and wrote a draft of his article before or during the draft. But don’t you think somebody — Schmitt, a copy editor, a page designer, anybody — would have raised a red flag when they read that? Or do they just slap anything they receive right on the page?
Someone caught the mistake before the article made the Gazette’s Web site. The article never made it to the Web version of the Journal.
Of course, Schmitt’s mistake pales in comparison to mistake made by US&J sports editor John D’Onofrio, who has been a favorite rag of the Roost’s Lockport contingent since middle school.
From Johnny D’s article on the Canal Fishing Derby in the very same section…
Once again their are 15 divisions of fish, seven each for both kids and adults.
Oh man. Their are times I want to put my head through a wall when I catch mistakes like that.
HAHA! Oh man. This post is filled with glorious win.