Once the balloting is over and the outcome of most races known, some readers are baffled by numbers they see in The San Diego Union-Tribune. They question how the newspaper can be so wrong. It has happened after more than one election, including Tuesday’s.
There is no question that Gov. Gray Davis won re-election. So, why, on Thursday did the Union-Tribune show on Page B-6 that challenger Bill Simon had won 51.50 percent of the vote, compared with Davis’ 40.70 percent? The information was included in a detailed listing of local results.
One reader was so agitated she said the people working for the newspaper were “a bunch of morons.”
What those readers were missing was that the results in the B-section reflected how San Diego County residents voted, as the headline indicated. In other words, Simon won the election in San Diego County but lost it on a statewide basis. Most readers understand that, but for those who miss the distinction, it’s understandably frustrating.
On the same day that the Union-Tribune carried the voter breakdown for the county, it also carried statewide results on offices and measures. They appeared on Page A-11. And, yes, the listing accurately showed that Davis won 47 percent of the vote to Simon’s 42 percent. That page also showed other state results for Congress, state propositions, state Senate, state appeals courts, state Supreme Court, the Board of Equalization, statewide offices and the Assembly.
Perhaps there was more confusion this year than in the past because the headline on Page B-6 said “County Results.” In the past, the headline has been: “How the county voted.” But, even then, some readers were confused. Perhaps the Union-Tribune should carry boldface information with the lists in each of the sections. A line in the A-section could refer readers to county results in the B-section, and a line in the B-section could refer readers to the statewide results in the A-section. We shouldn’t make it so difficult for readers to understand what we’re trying to tell them.
* * *
That 220-ton towering ficus tree at the San Diego Zoo wasn’t exactly given the “old heave-ho,” as indicated in a headline Tuesday.
Webster’s Dictionary points out that “heave ho!” is the cry sailors make when heaving up an anchor. It is also defined as “dismissal, as from a position, chiefly in the phrase give (or get) the (old) heave-ho,” which is what we like to do to politicians who don’t live up to their promises.
As the story explained, the tree was being moved 240 feet. The zoo wasn’t getting rid of it; the tree was being transplanted as part of the zoo’s $25 million “Heart of the Zoo” project.
There were no ropes, no human burdens involved in moving the tree, explained the reporter. The tree was moved by hydraulic jacks that rolled over metal rails.
The headline was not written by the reporter, but by a copy editor. As a rule, copy editors make many saves; they find errors and correct them before they can get into print and embarrass everyone involved. Every reporter and editor in the newsroom, I’m sure, has been the beneficiary of an alert copy editor who has saved the writer from looking bad. I know I have.
But when the headline writer isn’t precise and a mistake appears in a headline, it is usually a glaring one. And the more glaring, the more embarrassing.
An alert reader caught another headline misstep, this time on the front page, also on Tuesday. The headline said: “Suicide bomber kills 2, self in Israel.”
“Wasn’t that front-page headline (along with the first sentence of the story) just a bit redundant?” the reader asked. The first sentence said: “A Palestinian suicide attacker blew himself up yesterday while grappling with a security guard at a shopping mall in a Tel Aviv suburb, killing the guard and another person and wounding 12, including two infants.” The first sentence is not redundant, but kudos to the reader for catching the headline.”
And yet another four-line headline Nov. 2 sent a reader to his telephone. It said: “Rossum, on stand, says she didn’t kill husband.” A smaller two-line headline below it said: “Defendant denies slaying spouse to be with lover.”
The reader questioned the news in the headline. That’s why she’s on trial. Had she pleaded guilty to the crime, there wouldn’t have been a trial.
I suspect the headline writer would have preferred the secondary headline to get the message across, but was frustrated by the limited space allowed on each line of the main headline. However, the way it turned out, the headline belabored the obvious. What was new was that she said it under oath.
