Scottish Newspapers and Magazines

[freddie]

Anything but the two faced 'The Sun'. I remember once when England were playing Scotland at football, while the Scottish edition were pumping up the Scottish side their English parent rag had a picture of a piper with the headline 'Would you like to sit next to 100 of these windbags'. The story refered to the fact that Wembly (England's national stadium) were proposing to ban bagpipes from the crowd.

[Mike_Oettle]

Alan, you have my full sympathy when it comes to errors in newspaper columns.
It is a problem I have been involved in for the past 41 years.
A reporter might get everything right (although far too often they get all sorts of things wrong, cannot spell and cannot use the English language properly) and still have his/her work messed up by a sub-editor (or copy editor, as you North Americans call us).
And a sub-editor (or sub, as we call them) could do a perfect job of editing a story but be sabotaged by someone higher up who says: “This isn’t right. Can’t they ever get it right?”
And where a reporter is vague, the sub has to interpret. If the interpretation is wrong, the tendency nowadays in South Africa is for the editor to blame the sub (in print) while presuming that the reporter is an angel who cannot do any wrong.
You just can’t win!
Regards,
Mike

[Alan H]

It was slow at work today so I sent out the Press Release about the Wildcat Tartan. I utilized most of the links that all you lads passed on, which took some research in terms of WHO to send it to, at each place. I also added a few "different" sorts of places. It went out to--

Scottish Woman Magazine
No.1 Magazine
The Weekly News
The Courier
Edinburgh Sunday Mail
The Scots Magazine
The Scotsman
The Glasgow Herald (Rosemary Goring, columnist)
The Inverness Courier
The West Highland Free Press
The Oban Times
The Press & Journal
The Highland News
Scottish Field
The Lochaber News

---and several tartan designers and "likely" fashion bloggers that I thought might be interested in the story behind the fabric.

Judy Clark...... big-name Scottish designer who works with tartan a lot
Eric Musgrave... mens fashion guru, has an international reputation
Love from LouLou - Scottish fashion blogger
Everything looks Rosie - fashion blogger
Rock 'n roll BLONDE- - Scottish fashion blogger

======

I'm done. Done. Finis. I'm kind of stunned. Yeah, sure there might be a couple of questions to answer here and there, but the project is now completed. I've done every step I set out to do at the beginning. The proverbial torch has been passed on.

It's been a year. Wow.

[The Q]

Well done, now take a well deserved break.

[Alan H]

Herald Scotland (The Glasgow Herald?) picked it up!

http://www.heraldscotland.com/news/h...rity.130922073

WOOOHOOO!
Thank you to everybody who contributed to the "list".

EDIT: The Lochaber News is picking up the story as well!

[Tarheel]

Bravo! Great article. Let the masses explore the details to the fullest extent now that the information barrier has been breached.

[Orionson]

Herald Scotland (The Glasgow Herald?) picked it up!

http://www.heraldscotland.com/news/h...rity.130922073

WOOOHOOO!
Thank you to everybody who contributed to the "list".

EDIT: The Lochaber News is picking up the story as well!

Yes, indeed ~ the Herald Scotland is the Glasgow Herald. Ardnamurchan is in the Lochaber News patch, so it's no surprise that they have picked it up.

Well done.

[Bob C]

Having been the subject of a number of newspaper and magazine articles..

Some because of a former job that I had, doing environmental education
Several more because of the Highland Games

I can tell you that not ONE time has the printed article been without major factual errors. It's really astounding what A.) reporters can screw up or B.) what editors can do in terms of destroying what reporters give them.

Case in point: A couple of years ago I had a reporter out to practice to write about the highland games. I gave her chances to throw several of the implements as well as watch us throw and talk to us about the Games. She threw both hammer and the weight for distance. I explained what both of them were. I had the photographer take pictures of each of them, independently. I explained it again. Then I explained the difference between them *again*. All told, I explained the difference between a hammer and a weight SIX TIMES to this reporter. Not only that but she threw each of them several times.

Sure enough, in the article, the photograph of me throwing the weight for distance was labelled "hammer".

If a reporter can't get THAT right -such a simple thing...after having it told to them SIX times, after having their hands on the equipment after even throwing the equipment, themselves how can I trust ANY reporter to get ANYTHING right?

I've had reporters write and publish that I was holding a bat ray on board the research vessel I was working on...label a photograph that way when in fact I'm holding a shiner perch in the picture. It seems like an easy mistake to make until you realize that the reporter was at that touch tank, handling the fish herself for OVER AN HOUR AND A HALF. This is a shiner perch. Here's a waterproof key to the fish of San Francisco Bay....figure out what it is! WOW! It's a shiner perch! And she still got it wrong.

Now, did the REPORTERS get it wrong, or did the editors slash and cut all integrity out of the story before it went to print? I don't know. But I know this.

If after a four hour trip on the Bay, handling fish on deck for an HOUR AND A HALF, and keying out the fish..taking pictures of the fish... completely immersed in everything "fish".... the story that comes out is still wrong...

If after being told the difference between a hammer and a weight SIX times, after holding it in her hands, after taking pictures of each of them, and after throwing them herself and the story STILL gets it wrong....

Then how on EARTH can I trust a reporter to get everything right about a story on something REALLY complicated, like for example...Internet Security, or ISIS, or any actual bill coming before Congress or the State Legistlature? Did Eric Snowden actually SAY that? Probably not. Did David Cameron ACTUALLY say "“For too long, we have been a passively tolerant society, saying to our citizens: as long as you obey the law, we will leave you alone. " We really don't know, if we're depending on some reporter and editor to tell us.

No way. There's NO WAY they get it even vaguely close to right. I would like to try to believe that at least part of the news that I read about and see online is true and accurate but from my own personal experience I know that it's not. It will be flat-out dead wrong in many ways. And so I don't trust "the news" at all. Not one tiny little bit. It's all BS.

As a lifelong journalist, I take exception to this rant. If your small sample condemns all reporters, then I can say with absolute certainty that there is not an IT tech support person in the world worth a damn because I've had bad experience with far more than two of them.

[Alan H]

Bob, I gave two examples. However, the actual number of stories that I've been featured in over the years numbers seven. These range from the Stanford Med Center report to the local Palo Alto News to the Stanford Reveiw to the San Francisco Chronicle and the San Jose Mercury. Four of these were about my work with the Marine Science Institute...(http:www.msisfbay.org) and the other three have been about the Highland Games.

Not ONE of those articles was without significant factual error. When I say "significant" I mean things like not getting the difference between a shotput and a rock. --- Not getting the difference between a shark and a planktonic organism called a diatom. --- not getting the difference between the Gold Rush of the 1850's and environmental events that happened in 1920. These are not small, insignificant facts, nor were they badly explained. The reporters (or their editors) literally could not get straight things that most 6th graders learned aboard ship.

Bob, here's a perfect example.

http://www.stanforddaily.com/2013/04...-sports-scene/

That author came out and spent three hours with us on the field. And yet, that article is full of mistakes. Let's list a few.

We don't throw anvils. There were no anvils on the field when they were there.

"he was inspired to found the club after developing an interest in the music of river dancing,"

Uh, no. That's not even vaguely related to what I told them, not even CLOSE, and even if it was, the name of the show is RIVERDANCE. Maybe some of you have heard of it.

...and then she repeats the error.

After discovering an appreciation for the low whistle, an instrument that typically begins a riverdance,...... NO, the original show "Riverdance" begins with a low whistle solo.

Then the reporter pulls out this doozy.

Bethany Owen, Hebert’s co-captain, currently works with the Stanford Blood Center as a phlebotomist. She originally attended recreational Cardinal Highland club events to support Hebert and other friends but then decided to try throwing for herself.

“It looked like fun,” Owens said. “When I tried it, I was like ‘this is so much more fun than walking around in a tight skirt. I’d rather play.’”

What did Bethany ACTUALLY tell her? I mean, I was *there*, I heard what Bethany said. Bethany said that she started out in the Games by attending as a part of some Scottish Renaissance Faire Guilds, and she learned that participating in the Games as an athlete was a lot more fun than running around in a tight "wench" costume.

Then she pulls this winner out of her hat... She QUOTES ME as saying the following...

“When you go to highland games in Scotland, there are almost always costume running races, and there are often long-distance bicycling races,” Hebert said. “But they have [some throwing events now] that we do.”

"costume running races? Really? And now the Scots have started incorporating some of the throwing events that we do here in the USA! Isnt' that great?

Bob, this article is not unusual. This is typical of what I've seen printed by reporters time and again, when I've taken incredible pains to explain things in great detail. Over and over and over, things like this happen. Do you want MORE examples? I can probably dig up older articles.

Bob, it's nothing personal, but after repeated experiences with reporters generating stories which are so wildly DEAD WRONG, I no longer trust anything from the media.