Since I’ve been living in Halifax, I’d almost forgotten how much of a rag the Fredericton newspaper is.  The Daily Gleaner seems to have one of the worst editorial/proof-reading staff around, based solely on the sheer number and prominence of embarassing typos in the paper.  Consider three examples from the past week alone.

On a story about Boxing Day sales, a man was quoted as saying that he wanted to get a good deal on a new “wireless rooter”.  Someone should tell him that he’s been swindled, since I don’t think most rooters typically have wires anyway.  Or was he searching for a wireless router?  Even if the man being interviewed didn’t know how to pronounce it (I could see some non-tech-savvy individual rhyming “route” with “boot” instead of “pout”) the writer of the story should know the proper spelling, or be able to look it up.

Next up: apparently a councilor in Oromocto resigned recently because he didn’t like the town’s stance on youth and drugs.  So the Gleaner, in its editorial, called upon the town to provide more information.  Specifically, Oromocto seems to have developed a new drug known on the street as “Stragey” which people know very little about.  At least, that’s what I infer from the headline urging Oromocto to be more open about “its new drug stragey“.  Perchance, did you mean “strategy”?  Perhaps strategery?  Or were you simply snorting Stragey while writing this headline?

Finally, this one has to take the cake for most the ironic headline ever.  In a recent editorial concerning literacy rates in New Brunswick, the editor dropped this bombshell:

Literacy needs to be improve in province

It took me a good minute to stop laughing after that one.  When I wiped the tears from my eyes and actually read the editorial, I found a couple of statements which increased the irony even more.  The editor says

“We believe society needs to rely less on technology and get back more to basics.  Instead of using the spell check on computers to correct mistakes, have children and adults think about what they have done wrong.”

And once you have taught a few eight-year-olds how to write correctly in this manner, by all means, hire them to your editorial staff so they can get rid of some of these embarassing mistakes.  Until then, you’re a rag.

More Holiday vignettes coming soon, and some wii-lated news.