More mystery ‘sources’: Can they be believed?…

We learned last week that Jimbo Fisher will succeed Bobby Bowden, the venerable head coach of The Florida State University Seminoles football team.

At least that’s what the main headline on an article in Thursday’s Sports section told us.

The subordinate headline explained that FSU “is expected to announce” that Fisher, the new coordinator of the ‘Noles offense, will take over when Bowden retires. Hmmm. That seems a little less definitive.

In an even more cautious tone, the article, itself, stated, “It seems we now know” the answer to the oft-asked question about the next …

Candidates’ diversity is a legitimate topic to cover…

When voters go to the polls next year to elect the 44th president of the United States, it’s unrealistic to think a candidate’s race, gender or religion won’t matter to some people. For the first time in history, a woman, an African-American and a Mormon all have a legitimate shot at the White House.

Why then, did some readers take issue with the premise of AJC reporter Sonji Jacobs’ front-page story last Thursday about the dilemma facing black women, who have the opportunity to cast a vote for an African-American candidate or a woman if …

Beware of snake oil ads that are disguised as real news…

Newspapers have a tradition of running ads for snake oil – miracle diet pills, wonder drug pain relievers and elixirs. They also run ads for outfits that sell U.S. coins for much more than they are worth.

But hurry! Supplies are limited! Act now!

Newspapers also have a tradition of exposing the work of scam artists and shysters, some of whom use newspapers to advertise their goods.

A front-page story on Nov. 13 revealed that some pills marketed as safe herbal alternatives to Viagra and other prescription sex medications can pose hidden dangers. If combined …

Lull in Baghdad violence proves hard to quantify…

Of all the stories in the newspaper, the one that continues to attract the most reader interest is the war in Iraq.

Month in and month out, comments, questions and criticisms about the war and how it is portrayed in The Bee form a steady and consistent backdrop, ebbing and flowing as political events and military incidents dictate.

And that interest is reflected nationally.

Last week, a national survey taken in late November by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press found that the war “continues to be viewed as the most …

Corrections, like errors, aren’t one-size-fits-all…

A reader called me recently because she was confused by a correction she read on Page A-2 of The Kansas City Star.

“I thought the whole idea was for the corrections column to make me understand what was wrong in a story,” she said. “But I’ve read this one over several times and I went back to the original article, and I don”t understand what the problem was you were supposed to be setting straight.”

The correction, in the Nov. 20 paper, read: “An Across the Metro item in some Nov. 20 editions misidentified …

Myanmar vs. Burma: Choice of name reflects newspapers’ ‘styl…

Some things you’ve asked lately:

Why Myanmar?

“I have noticed that The Plain Dealer refers to the country of Burma as Myanmar,” wrote Jordan Holtz of Mayfield. “Why pick on Burma?”

He went on to list a number of countries whose names are spelled differently in their language than in English. “Most people do not know what Myanmar is any more than they know what Helvetia (Switzerland), Sverige (Sweden), etc., are,” he wrote. “It is a disservice to your readers.”

The question has currency at the moment because of President Bush’s recent announcement of …

When ads cause discomfort…

A reader telephoned to say that last Sunday he gave up on reading a story selected for its headline because “I got tired of looking for it among all the ads.” I was also bothered. I searched through stories on pages A4, A8 and A13. Among them was an excess of advertising.

“It is difficult to find Folha’s articles in this salad of buildings and condominiums,” one reader confessed. Another provoked, “Is Folha a newspaper with some ads or an advertiser with some news?”

Messages from readers piled up after the Nov. 10 …

Owning up to our own mistakes…

Journalist Craig Silverman is obsessed by a world where mistakes happen and regrets abound.

As founder and editor of Regret the Error, a website that tracks and reports on media accuracy, Silverman spends several (unpaid) hours, seven days a week, culling through the online corrections pages of newspapers around the globe in order to find the most egregious, shocking and often funny media errors and corrections to post on his award-winning site.

Silverman, 30, a Montreal-based freelance journalist, launched the site in October 2004 because he was interested in the issue of media accuracy and …

Case shines lurid light on news media…

Has anyone else had enough of the Drew Peterson case?

The story is a daily reminder of what I don’t like about local television news, morning network news, true crime shows on cable and tabloid journalism in general.

The media circus that Tribune reporters Josh Noel and Matthew Walberg wrote about Tuesday has enveloped the suburban neighborhood in Bolingbrook as journalists and TV crews stand their macabre watch.

It has always irritated me when readers complain about “the media,” and I know they lump the newspaper in with networks such as Fox News that …

Continuity and change on the letters page …

‘Letters have to pass two tests before they can be classed as good: they must express the personality both of the writer and of the recipient.” Out of curiosity I rifled the Guardian’s digital archive last week for letters published in the 19th century and came across plenty that fitted EM Forster’s epigrammatic definition on subjects as diverse as workhouses, traffic (horses, carriages and omnibuses), the cotton trade, education (lack of, for the poor), sightings of meteors (1858 and 1865), wooden pavements (noisy and slippery) and ghosts.

The paper published 150 years ago today looked very …