ONA Issues

markcoatney:

So the Susan Dominus profile of Connie Britton in the Sunday magazine was really enjoyable. But there were a couple of things that really jammed me. First, in this sentence: 

“Britton had clipped up her famous hair (the subject of not only its own admiring tumblr but also Twitter hashtags like #conniebrittonshair).”

it really should be capital ‘T’ Tumblr; I know everyone uses Tumblr as a generic synonym for blog now, but the Times copy desk should know better.

That’s small beans, for sure; but this, two grafs later, is more of a thing.  

For Britton, almost any career move felt like a potential step down from “Friday Night Lights.” Through her character on that show, Britton had developed the kind of devoted following that only a talented but slightly underexposed star can. “When I grow up, I want to be Tami Taylor” is the title of one post on a site about pop culture. A writer for The Hairpin spied Britton in a coffee shop and promptly posted a list of things she could have said to her. Among them: “Please lend me the key to being a woman and I’ll run across the street and make a few copies because I know I’ll lose it over the weekend.”

The odd thing here: Why doesn’t the Times name these people? Forget linking to the articles referenced; while this of course would be proper, I understand the TImes’ production process, and why something created for print might not be fully up to Web standard.

But why not at least say that the “blog on pop culture” is called Ashley Graceless? If the Times quoted “Hamlet”, would they refer to it “a monologue from a play about revenge?” And the “writer for The Hairpin” has a name, Anna Breslaw, which the Times was apparently unable to unearth; from here on out; we shall refer to Hugo Lindgren as “an editor for the Times.”

It’s a small thing, but telling—the Times would never do this with sources from what it considers legitimate outlets—and graceless to say the least.