Misplaced Hall-of-Famer

As a Red Sox fan, I'm thrilled that Jim Rice is finally being inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame this weekend. As an editor, I'm appalled at the headline about the story on the team's official Web site.

Click on the image at right to see the offending headline. It reads: "Years in making, Rice ready for day in sun."

What we have here is a misplaced modifier. The phrase "years in the making" is supposed to modify Rice's "big day." But modifiers are supposed to appear next to the words they modify. This means that readers might incorrectly infer that the phrase is modifying Rice himself. A better headline would be "After 15-year wait, Rice ready for day in sun."

For more on misplaced modifiers, visit one of my favorite blogs, Grammar Monkeys, at the Wichita Eagle.

And in case you were wondering, longtime left fielder and Red Sox captain Rice is being enshrined with base stealer extraordinaire Rickey Henderson and 1942 MVP Joe Gordon. The ceremony is set for 1:30 p.m. Eastern time Sunday.

Goodbye to a legend

I came of age after Walter Cronkite had already retired as anchor of the evening news, but I still appreciate what he did. You can view his greatest moments and see for yourself.

I really enjoyed the appreciation in today's New York Times by Verlyn Klinkenborg. Here's my favorite part:

Some deaths end only a life. Some end a generation. Walter Cronkite’s death ends something larger and more profound. He stood for a world, a century, that no longer exists. His death is like losing the last veteran of a world-changing war, one of those men who saw too much but was never embittered by it. Walter Cronkite’s gift was to talk to us about what he saw, and we are very lucky to have been able to listen.

Unfortunate, but all too true.

Thanks, Uncle Walter, for all you gave journalism.

Which is it?

I enjoyed a recent scathing book review in The New York Times. Janet Maslin really took it to Chris Anderson, author of "Free: The Future of a Radical Price," and Ellen Ruppel Shell, author of "Cheap: The High Cost of Discount Culture."

But Maslin made an error that made my crankiness rear its ugly head. The reviewer chided both authors because they referred to the same story but told it in different ways. I kept waiting for Maslin to tell readers which retelling was correct. She didn't. In the journalism business, that's called a "hole" -- a question that should have been answered but wasn't. I also like to refer to it with the technical term "bad reporting."

The case in point involves a research study by Dan Ariely. According to Maslin, the books she reviewed had the story as follows:

According to “Cheap” he offered his subjects a choice between the 1-cent Kiss and a 26-cent Ferrero Rocher hazelnut. At those prices the test subjects were divided 40 percent to 40 percent, with 20 percent opting for neither. Then the prices came down by one penny each, and 90 percent of the subjects took the free chocolate. Only 10 percent chose the higher-priced brand.

And here's what Maslin says about "Free":

In its “Free” version the non-Kiss candy is a Lindt truffle initially priced at 15 cents while the Kiss cost a penny; 73 percent of subjects chose the truffle and 27 percent picked the Kiss, with nobody abstaining. Then the prices were lowered by 1 cent each, and 69 percent of the subjects chose the free Kiss.

So which story is correct? Well, after about five minutes of Google searching, I found out. The study, written by Kristina Shampanier and Nina Mazar, as well as Ariely, described TWO experiements. The first involved a Lindt truffle, as Anderson says, but he got the price wrong. It was originally 14 cents, not 15. The second involved a Ferrero Rocher, just as Shell said. And she got the prices right.

Good copy editors either send stories with holes back to the authors for fixing or fill the holes on their own. Today's lesson: Don't leave holes in stories. If you leave readers guessing after reading a story, they might not come back next time.