By Frank Moher
Maclean’s gaily partisan coverage of the Conrad Black trial has now spread from Mark Steyn’s blog to what we thought was its straight news reporting (if there’s such a thing in Maclean’s anymore). “In a piece that cries out for a copy editor like a wounded seal pup for its mother,” writes Jordan Timm Chris Selley on their site today (see Comments below), “Allan Fotheringham expresses his disapproval of just about everything to do with the trial.”
One of the subjects of Fotheringham’s disapproval is Steyn’s coverage — hence the need to take him down a notch. However, before Maclean’s starts trash-talking other publications’ copy editing, it might want to go back and check one of Steyn’s dispatches from earlier in the month, in which he sounds, first, like Pancho Gonzales and then like Borat: “The Chicago boys may be right about the jury but I think Greenspan he’s the licensed bad cop . . . . It was tough going with a combative Radler, but eventually a drained witness was reducing to a series of weak monosyllables.”
Woowahweewah.
***
Update: We note that within hours of our posting the above, Steyn’s speaking in tongues had been corrected.
Backofthebook.ca: helping the big guys keep their copy clean since 2006.
Jordan Timm offers this clarification as to who wrote what:
“I didn’t write the passage in question. I just bash out the summary in the morning; the portion you’re quoting comes from the colour that Macleans.ca assistant editor Chris Selley adds later in the day.
The credit is wrong on the site (you’ll notice the rest of the Black daily updates have both our names bylined). I’ll email my managing editor immediately and ask him to correct it. In the meantime, I’d be grateful if you’d make the correction on your blog.
Thanks and best,
Jordan”