235 mph... oops.
 

Don't these guys hire editors anymore? I got a chuckle out of this one.

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Hurricane Rina to intensify to Category 3, quick showers on Wednesday - Miami-Dade Breaking News - MiamiHerald.com

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Hurricane Rina to intensify to Category 3, quick showers on Wednesday
By Sarah Elder The Miami Herald

By Sarah Elder
selder@miamiherald.com
Hurricane Rina, a Category 2 hurricane, is expected to turn into a Category 3 hurricane later on Wednesday. With intense winds up to 235 miles per hour Rina is being watched closely. [Now if only the editing was watched equally closely...]

Rina is located 235 miles south – southeast of Cozumel, Mexico. Meteorologists, now dubbing it the misnomer the ‘Cone of Concern,’ are not sure going into the weekend, if Rina will fizzle to a tropical storm or plague South Florida with some serious winds and downpours.

A hurricane warning is in effect for both the Yucatan Peninsula and Belize.

Forecasters predict the moisture from Rina will bring more showers in the South Florida area toward the end of the work week

Wednesday’s forecast is a mix of sun and clouds with a 20 percent chance of quick showers predicted for later in the day. The high of Wednesday to be at 84 – the current temperature is at 77 degrees.

This article will be updated as more information becomes available.

Rina is a quicky.

Re hiring editors:

As it happens, I am a newspaper copy editor - getting set to go to work now, as it happens.

First of all, that's obviously a horrible mistake. And not to be defensive, but everybody makes them - even me, after 40 years in the business.

Especially now, when so many of us have been laid off and the work loads have risen so drastically. You have to work fast, so you read past things like this that really should catch one's eye. That's not to make excuses. It's just to say that things like this happen.

The other more troubling thing, I think, is that the young people doing this work these days seem to not know some of the things you might reasonably expect them to know. Our guys are a really good bunch - there are four of us, and the other three double as designers, so they really have their hands full. But the reporters are amazing. No matter how hard-working and dedicated they are, they're almost all capable of including things in their copy, like the mph figure listed above, without giving it a second thought. People today just don't seem to have a lot of common sense about how things work. They don't know basic stuff and I don't sense that the quality of the educations they got was as good as it should have been. We all work hard to save them from themselves, but sometimes we screw up too.

In this case, the reporter probably just typed it in wrong; but she she should have seen it when she re-read her piece before she filed it. But maybe it didn't dawn on her that hurricane winds didn't blow at this speed. Plus, they're under pressure too - do multiple stories every day, keep raising productivity or someone else will replace them - the news business has become pretty darned tough.

Finally, the emphasis in newsrooms always has been on speed, but now it's become ridiculous. At a couple of the four papers whose copy I work on, reporters are expected to put their stories up on the Web themselves as soon as they finish the story. That's because it's deemed important to have a flow of fresh material going up all the time, especially when they don't publish a hard copy every day, as some of ours don't. That means the stuff that gets put up hasn't seen the steady hand of a cranky, suspicious copy editor who doesn't trust anyone or anything - someone like me - it's raw. Crazy, because I'm there every day and easily could read it, but that's not the way the system is set up.

The ethic today seems to be that fast is better than good. Obviously it is not, but given the conditions in the business, nobody can afford to make waves about this - hell, I was off for awhile and I'm just lucky to be working.

Yea, it's just a minor "whoops" - the writer probably had the number 235 on the brain for the distance from Cozumel. Just found it a bit funny.

Good insights - I've often wondered how it is to work in that industry - seems like there's a lot more pressure and competition from freelance folks (everyone and their brother has a camera these days).

At the ripe age of seventeen my uncle got me a job in a small printing firm in Stockholm. As it turned out they printed mostly porn magazines. Of this my uncle knew nothing. As a teenager I thought it was the best gig in the world. Until my uncle found the stack under my bed..

That was not a minor whoops.

Re freelance:

That's often the bloggers, I think. At our papers we still use some freelance, mostly in the feature and entertainment sections; but like everything else, budgets have been cut way back.

Ah hah. This explains a lot.

I actually did not see that coming. How stupid of me. :D

253kph would be a Cat 5. 253mph would be a shock wave or something.

Miles off the coast v. Miles per hour

235...236...what ever it takes...

The Fluffer's biggest job hazard and worst nightmare!

Ah, when you're too good for your job.

It's all fun and games until someone loses an eye.

OK. I had that coming..