A brief item in the metro section of today's New York Times reports, "Several car tires in Williamsburg were found slashed early yesterday morning, and a swaskika was painted on the door of a rabbi's home in the neighborhood, police officials said. The tire slashings occurred in sections of Williamsburg that are predominantly Hispanic and Jewish." Never mind the misspelling of the word swastika. The Times places the attack in entirely the wrong Brooklyn neighborhood. At least three other New York dailies -- the New York Post, the Daily News and Newsday -- say the crimes took place in Crown Heights, not Williamsburg. The details in the other papers indicate that they are correct and the Times is in error. The New York Post says the swastika was "in a hallway" of a building at 481 Crown Street, and that the tire slashings were "on Crown and Montgomery streets between Brooklyn and Kingston Avenues." Newsday says that the swastika was found at a "Crown Street apartment building" and that many of the tire slashings took place "along Montgomery Street." The authoritative 1998 book "The Neighborhoods of Brooklyn" places these sites within Crown Heights, which is not even adjacent to Williamsburg.
Late Again: An article on the front page of today's New York Times reports on how Jefferson County, Mississippi, has become a "Lawsuit Mecca." This is a straight rip-off of an article by Mark Ballard that appeared in the National Law Journal on April 27, 2001. There's no plagiarism, but the themes of the stories are almost exactly the same. National Law Journal headline: "Mississippi Becomes a Mecca for Tort Suits." New York Times headline, almost four months later, "Mississippi Gaining as Lawsuit Mecca." The National Law Journal article begins with an anecdote about a frequently sued pharmacy, the Bankston Drug Store on Main Street in Fayette, Miss. The New York Times article reports that "Bankston Drug Store, the county's only pharmacy, in Fayette, is a frequent target." The Times doesn't credit the National Law Journal story.
Caught Dead: A dispatch from Columbus, Ohio, in the national section of today's New York Times reports on a death row prisoner. "The choice is his under Ohio law, but his spirited protest to die by electrocution, the first in 38 years, has galvanized a movement among capital punishment advocates to repeal that choice in the Ohio General Assembly and leave lethal injection as the state's sole means of killing capital criminals." This is worded vaguely, but one plausible interpretation makes it sound like the prisoner is the first in the nation to die by electrocution in 38 years. Maybe he would be the first in 38 years in Ohio. But there have been quite a few electrocutions in the U.S. over the past 38 years. To give just two examples, Florida electrocuted Allen Lee "Tiny" Davis in July 1999, and Georgia used the electric chair to execute Nicholas Lee Ingram in April 1995.
Can't Spell: A graphic that runs with a front-page article in today's New York Times about pollution lawsuits refers to "sulpher dioxide." As the article makes clear, it should be "sulfur dioxide."
Can't Spell: A dispatch from Loma, Montana, in the national section of today's New York Times notes archly that entries in Meriwether Lewis's journal were "often misspelled." The same New York Times article goes on to refer to a new national monument as a "momuent."