The N.Y. Times and racing
Want to see someone go crazy? Go over to the Diecast Dude's site, find the comments and write "The New York Times."
You'll hear the screams all the way from the West Coast.
Jerry is pretty alert for perceived bias against drivers and racin' in general, and his specific target is more often than not the N.Y. Times, the Yankees (or the Great Satan) of print journalism. Yesterday, for instance, he ripped the Paper of Record for a story about The Sporting News' quote-unquote coverage of "Talladega Nights." (I thought the Ricky Bobby column was clever. But give away the N&R's Sports space for that? Not a chance.)
What chaps me about the Times is even more basic: its weird style quirks. For years it referred to pop star Madonna as "Ms. Ciccone" and U2 lead singer Bono as "Mr. Hewson." Every last name, you see, had to be preceded by an honorific, and "Miss Madonna" wasn't quite accurrate and .. These are the things upon which two-page memos and newspaper subcommittees are built upon.
But the thing that really gets me is when the Times calls it Nascar. It's NASCAR, all capital letters, which stands for the National Association of etc. etc. etc. It's an acronym, like NATO and OPEC or NAMBLA.
I suspect that around the halls of 229 West 43rd St. that there's more money riding on Harvard-Yale football and Head of the Charles than there is on the outcome of the NASCAR chase. But that's no reason to refer to the sport as Nascar. They don't call it the Nfl, do they?
More:
"Hey, Sports Fans! You're Stupid" by the Diecast Dude, 7/31/2006
"Ad or Editorial Content? Readers Must Figure It Out" by Maria Aspan, 7/31/2006 (reg. req.)
"In Search of Diversity, Nascar has a prospect," Viv Bernstein, 7/31/2006 (reg. req.)
Comments (8)
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You have no idea how much it bothers me that the Times writes Nascar. I complain about it all the time and people think I'm being nitpicky. Uh, no, I just like accuracy. Glad to see I'm not alone.
Posted on August 1, 2006 1:31 PM
Well, it's not like the New York Times is picking on NASCAR. Its style guide says that long acronyms start with a capital and be followed by lower case letters.
So UNICEF is Unicef, NORAD is Norad, ASCAP is Ascap, and so on. And in Times style, NAMBLA IS Nambla ... that's all I'll say about that one.
I'm not saying it's right, but they are consistent.
Actually I kind of like the rule, it avoids the alphabet soup that comes with use of acronyms. But it does seem a bit silly with NASCAR since the Grey Lady is probably the only place that you ever see it without all caps.
Be glad they don't do N.A.S.C.A.R.
Posted on August 1, 2006 2:09 PM
I prefer to think of it as correcting misinformation from a New York City daily newspaper, not going crazy.
It's worth noting the papers out here in the San Francisco Bay Area avoid this problem altogether... by never mentioning NASCAR except on the day after the race, when they run the AP story. Or at least the first two paragraphs of it. Usually not much more than that, though. Might impinge on Giants or 49ers coverage.
Posted on August 1, 2006 3:18 PM
Instead of helping "stupid" Nascar fans by pointing out that Ricky Bobby is a fictional character, I wish the New York Times would start a crusade against newspapers like the News & Record that insult their fans every week by publishing starting times for the races that often nearly an hour away from the actual start time. It would be so easy for the News & Record to say pre-race show starts at 2 p.m. Green flag scheduled for 2:50 p.m. The paper tells us when the kickoff for an NFL game is expected, but when it comes to Nascar, you're so deep in Nascar's pockets that you mislead the fans so the broadcaster can get an audience for their commercials waaaaay ahead of when the actual start of the action.
Posted on August 1, 2006 4:42 PM
Well then you would complain that you miss the green flag if the start time is moved up and blame it on the paper.
Posted on August 1, 2006 5:26 PM
The funny thing is, Norskar, we've tried to do a better job of running green flag times since you busted on us last year - see Saturday's paper, page C6, for an example of how I worked it into the Busch advance. I guess I'll have to do something more.
Btw, the Morning Sports Log on C2 will *always* list the TV start because it says "Today's TV" and not "Today's Kickoff" or "Today's First Pitch." It's always been a TV schedule, something that nearly all of our readers seem to get.
Posted on August 1, 2006 5:33 PM
John,
In Nascar, you list the start time for what actually is the beginning of the pre-race show, which often lasts nearly an hour. If you listed an NFL start as the beginning of the pre-game show, that would be something different. But, of course, you don't do that because football fans would go crazy. Why Nascar fans don't is something I'll never understand.
Posted on August 2, 2006 10:41 AM
Norskar, let me spell it out since you don't get it on your own: the NFL pre-race show is at a set time every week because the games start at 1 every week. OK? NASCAR races change start times from one week to the next and the pre-race shows vary from one week to the next. At Indy this week it'll be an hour or longer. Some weeks it is just 30 minutes. The broadcasts don't differentiate because its not an exact science week to week. Got it?
Posted on August 2, 2006 1:15 PM