Let's examine this lead from our friends at the Associated Press.
LOS ANGELES -- If the answer is Ken Jennings and his record $920,960 so far in "Jeopardy!" winnings, the question must be, how does he do it?
Notice anything wrong?
The lead doesn't follow the format of a true "Jeopardy" clue. The question should be something along the lines of: "Who has excited the TV world with his quiz show winnings?"
This lead does not make sense. It's stupid. It's a non sequitur. The follow-up paragraph doesn't improve matters:
A curious mind, good memory and astute buzzer technique, said Jennings, a Utah software engineer who will make an unprecedented 29th appearance on the syndicated quiz show tonight.
That's right. The story compounds the error by answering the question that should have been addressed at the start.
Did I notice this? Did I catch this monumental stupidity? Nope. An astute desk intern at my workplace saw the mistake on a page proof. Everyone agreed it was a terrific catch. Her fix:
LOS ANGELES - If the answer is Ken Jennings with $920,960 so far in winnings, the question must be, who holds the "Jeopardy!" record?
A curious mind, good memory and astute buzzer technique got him this far, said Jennings, a Utah software engineer who will make an unprecedented 29th appearance on the quiz show tonight.
Better.
You might expect that such bungling be caught and excised by major newspapers. You might expect that legions of sensible copy editors across the country made a similar rewrite. You might imagine that people had sense.
You would be wrong.
A simple Google search (the lame tool of lazy writers everywhere) shows the unchanged story appearing on newspaper Web sites aplenty. I think it's time for a little hall of shame for those who couldn't be bothered to read a wire story and consider if it made sense.
USA Today
Boston Globe
Wichita Eagle (which found the time to localize the second graf!)
Toronto Star (which changed the grammar of the first sentence, but not the problem)
Hartford Courant
Washington Post
Philadelphia Daily News
Miami Herald
Newark Star Ledger
Houston Chronicle
And on and on and on.
I don't mean to be unduly harsh. Wire copy usually slips through copy desks with the barest of reads. In many newspapers, copy editors have their hands tied with problematic local stories. Also, these stories may have been posted by web staff before editing.
But try. We need to try. We need to give wire stories thorough, meaningful looks. Or else we look more desperately out-of-touch than we already are.