Yesterday, Francesca Olsen's report about the stabbings on the 200 block of Warren Street appeared online in The Daily Mail shortly after noon, beating the Times Union by more than four hours. The report didn't appear on the Register-Star website until 2:12 a.m. this morning, nearly 24 hours after the incident took place. I guess the decision makers at Hudson-Catskill Newspapers figured people in Catskill would be more interested in knowing that two unidentified Catskill men had been stabbed in Hudson than the people of Hudson would be in knowing that this violence had happened in their midst.
I stand corrected. A reader just informed me that the story of the stabbings had been posted on the Register-Star website at 12:25 p.m. on New Year's Day. I got word about the incident, but no details, shortly after 10 a.m. on Saturday morning from people who live nearby and had witnessed the police cordoning off the block around 6 a.m. I checked the Register-Star website at that time and a few more times but found nothing. After I posted the link to the Times Union story, I found a link to The Daily Mail story on WGXC Newsroom. I checked the Register-Star again at that point, but I still didn't see it. I don't know how I could have missed it, but obviously I did. It didn't make sense to me that they would publish the story in Catskill and not in Hudson--especially a story by a Register-Star reporter--but stranger things have happened. So, mea culpa. I apologize for publishing misinformation about when this story appeared in the Register-Star. I guess I've started the new year in a rather bad way myself.
This morning an unidentified Register-Star caption writer trotted out the tired old "them and us," "real people vs. the elite" theme when s/he wrote this comment about a photo taken by David Lee on New Year's Eve at Club Helsinki: "The hoi polloi (that's 'the many' in Greek) rubbed elbows with the swells at Helsinki Friday evening. . . ." Oddly, the writer felt compelled to translate hoi polloi, lest hoi polloi not realize it meant them, and in doing so drew attention to his/her own mistake: To say "the hoi polloi" is redundant; hoi is Greek for "the."
There are ways to express diversity without fomenting divisiveness. Words matter.
i found the report on the RS website around 2 p.m. on 1/1 gossips and forwarded it to some friends that had been visiting hudson.
ReplyDeleteRe 'hoi polloi'. Maybe the writer should have just used the word 'plebs'.
ReplyDelete