I usually read my news online (Reuters and AP wire stories via Yahoo! News), where it seems that speed is valued above quality. Stories are truncated, the same facts are given at both the beginning and the end of articles, and the pictures rarely relate well to the text. I’ve gotten used to these thrown-together stories that don’t completely make sense, but today I found what is probably the worst one I’ve ever seen.
This Associate Press story on the first transatlantic flight of the AirBus A380 is horrible. You can read it if you’d like but I’ll excerpt some of the “best” parts here (emphasis mine):
The four-engine Airbus A380 touched down at Kennedy International Airport at about 12:10 p.m., to the cheers of onlookers gathered to watch the arrival. As the plane taxied, a pilot waved an American flag. A separate A380 was flying to Los Angeles time but devoid of any passengers.
The air show began early Monday at Frankfurt International Airport when the took off as Lufthansa Flight 8940 for the eight-hour flight to Kennedy, scheduled to land at 12:30 p.m. EDT.
That one does double duty as a non sequitur (this is the only time in the article that an air show is mentioned) that also has words missing.
Using the performance results from this circuit — flying the plane as it would be done so if it were in service — Lufthansa’s goal is to match the A380’s turnaround time from landing to takeoff with that of much smaller long-haul jets already in operation.
The company revised its plan to allow for arrival at both locations. Los Angeles sped up construction of a $9 million gate for the giant gate to accommodate the plane.
In addition to these blatant errors, the wording of the whole article is off, and it is quite obvious that parts of it were pasted in from other places.
I wish someone would read the news before it was released to the public.