[kictanet] Declining English grammar in our Newsprint

Tue Oct 11 16:27:41 EAT 2011

Andrea,

Robert meant to say, "you are digressing", in his earlier email. Hope you
won't read
offense into it... 

Harry

  _____  

From: kictanet-bounces+harry=comtelsys.co.ke at lists.kictanet.or.ke
[mailto:kictanet-bounces+harry=comtelsys.co.ke at lists.kictanet.or.ke] On
Behalf Of robert yawe
Sent: Tuesday, October 11, 2011 3:18 PM
To: harry at comtelsys.co.ke
Cc: KICTAnet ICT Policy Discussions
Subject: Re: [kictanet] Declining English grammar in our Newsprint

Andrea,

You are disgracing, what I was responding to was your issue that suggested
that a jobless graduate was inferior to an employed one.

I concur with you on the issue of having the senior editors educate the
newbies, what could be done in my outsourcing model would be to deduct a
certain amount for every error picked up further ahead in the chain, 

"hit where it hurts most"

Many people who jumped on the initial outsourcing "gravy train" got
shut-down due to the high costs of the errors they made when transcribing,
some ended up receiving invoices instead of cheques.

Regards

Robert Yawe
KAY System Technologies Ltd
Phoenix House, 6th Floor
P O Box 55806 Nairobi, 00200
Kenya

Tel: +254722511225, +254202010696

  _____  

From: Andrea Bohnstedt <andrea.bohnstedt at ratio-magazine.com>
To: robert yawe <robertyawe at yahoo.co.uk>
Cc: KICTAnet ICT Policy Discussions <kictanet at lists.kictanet.or.ke>
Sent: Tuesday, 11 October 2011, 10:56
Subject: Re: [kictanet] Declining English grammar in our Newsprint

Robert, 

Whether you have your editing outsourced or not is mainly a questions of how
you structure the contracts - do you have people on the payroll, or do you
have them work as freelancer. Or you could have them on the payroll, but
have them work online, so they can work anywhere and don't need to be
physically present in the office. 

However, that's secondary to quality, although I'd argue that for key
functions, it'd be more useful to have them on payroll and in the office. A
lot of mistakes occur again and again, so if I were in charge of cleaning up
copy (and I was milimetres away from applying for that position with the
Star), I'd try to develop an approach that would teach the journalists to
avoid them. I'd hunt down anyone who still uses 'greenbuck' and 'curving a
niche' and who uses 'adorn' wrongly.  

My point is: 'English graduate' in itself is not a qualification for good
copy editing. That requires a lot more than an English degree. It's entirely
possible that someone with an English degree makes for a good copy editor,
but it requires a lot more than that.

Andrea  

On 11 October 2011 09:36, robert yawe <robertyawe at yahoo.co.uk> wrote:

Hi Andrea,

What is outsourcing if not sending out what has been standardised, as some
have mentioned that it is becoming too expensive to hire editors why not
outsource the same.

A jobless language graduate is no different from an employed language
graduate, the graduate is jobless because the media houses cannot afford to
pay them to sit in the office to work so why not apply technology.

That graduate sitting in Chepalungu can go to Pasha centre every evening
after tending the firm or teaching at  the local primary school log onto the
web and proof read articles due for publishing.  At 500/- per article the
media house will spend 15,000/-, no pension or medical expenses, no desk
space required, no tea at 10 and 4, one less supervisor, our food security
will have moved a step forward, the slums in Nairobi will grow that much
slower, the local school will have another teacher thus reducing the
teacher/student ratio and last and least you and I will be less stressed by
the mediocrity that has manifested in the media.

"Think global but act local"

Robert Yawe
KAY System Technologies Ltd
Phoenix House, 6th Floor
P O Box 55806 Nairobi, 00200
Kenya

Tel: +254722511225, +254202010696

  _____  

From: Andrea Bohnstedt <andrea.bohnstedt at ratio-magazine.com>

To: robertyawe at yahoo.co.uk 

Cc: KICTAnet ICT Policy Discussions <kictanet at lists.kictanet.or.ke>

Sent: Monday, 10 October 2011, 10:41 

Subject: Re: [kictanet] Declining English grammar in our Newsprint

What Catherine said. Editing, proofreading, subbing require skill and
experience and knowledge - it's *not* something you can just farm out to
jobless graduates. 

On 10 October 2011 10:16, Catherine Adeya <elizaslider at yahoo.com> wrote:

I think there is a wrong impression that a Journalism graduate is best
suited to edit a paper. You may be better off with an English major
graduate, Linguistics graduate and Information Sciences (Publishing Major)
graduate. The IS course at MU had a renowned editing course in the '80s with
the late Jonathan Kariara. I do not know how they are doing now. I remember
him teaching an editing class and emphasizing the importance of good
grammar, good English and simplicity especially when communicating to the
wider market. I remember "Class, it is easier to say "walk" rather than
"perambulate" even though they mean the same thing.  He gave an example of
certain words that you must be extremely careful about when editing...they
are words that you must counter-check and DO NOT AT ANY COST rely on  your
computer (the class already had experience in this). 

Let me give you an example of one of those words and forgive me as I have no
intention to be vulgar. Two years ago I was in Dar and I was reading their
top local paper. The heading in one of the lead stories was 'President opens
a Pubic library'......I can't remember whether it was a library or what but
you know the word I am referring to. I actually drew the attention of
someone I knew to this major error and she promised to get in touch with the
editor. My point is such words on a spell-checker will be correct, it
requires as well trained eye to still sweep over the document and pick words
like this. Even in the the Kenyan case we lack this seriously yet the
qualified people are there. I am glad this topic has come up because
sometimes I just put the paper aside as I am horrified at the level of
grammar and editorial mistakes. The same happens with the news that is
scrolled during News broadcasts....and while I am at that... some of the
Opinion questions are SO ABSURD and even worse they are  grammatically
wrong...wrong...wrong....

Enough said....

Nyaki

  _____  

From: Victor Bwire <victor at article19.org>
To: elizaslider at yahoo.com 

Cc: KICTAnet ICT Policy Discussions <kictanet at lists.kictanet.or.ke>

Sent: Tuesday, October 4, 2011 11:29 PM 

Subject: Re: [kictanet] Declining English grammar in our Newsprint

Infact it is the ICT use that is the cause of the problem- given the little
ICT literacy by some of our newsrooms- most of our sub editors learn
computer by on job-rarely able to master command of the computer functions-
including grammer, spell checks-it will continue happening

Previously, we used to print hard copies of the articles for editing
manually with red pens- thus very few mistakes- but now

Many of journalism courses do not include introduction to computer lessons-
so how will the graduates know how to use them

Who regulates journalism training or draws the course or approves the same
in the country anyway- if you even happen to see some course outlines
offered in some of the colleges and universities offering journalism
including Government ones- you will feel sorry

________________________________
From: kictanet-bounces+victor=article19.org at lists.kictanet.or.ke
[kictanet-bounces+victor=article19.org at lists.kictanet.or.ke] on behalf of
james ratemo [jratemo at gmail.com]
Sent: 04 October 2011 21:16
To: Victor Bwire
Cc: KICTAnet ICT Policy Discussions
Subject: Re: [kictanet] Declining English grammar in our Newsprint

Bwana PS what are you insinuating? We open our newsrooms fro the so called
English majors? Some of them are in the newsrooms already...maybe they are
sleeping on the job...my opinion

On Tue, Oct 4, 2011 at 11:11 PM,
<bitange at jambo.co.ke<mailto:bitange at jambo.co.ke>> wrote:
All of today's newspapers had several grammatical errors.  At this time and
age of ICT, is it not too embarrasing to have such errors?  We have
thousands of English majors without jobs.  It is time for media to be
thorough in what they do by utilizing our many graduates without jobs.  As a
Kenyan I get embarrased to see such errors.

Ndemo.

Sent from my BlackBerryR

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