I had to miss Jim Moroney’s speech to the D Empire last week, as I was on deadline. But if I’d been there, I would have asked the Morning News publisher about something that has bothered me since I worked for his publication.
[Before we go any further, grab a copy of today ’s Metro section so you can follow along at home.]
Check out the list of U.S. cities on the right. There are “yesterday,” “today,” and “tomorrow” columns. The latter two include abbreviated forecasts – “ts” for thunderstorms, “pc” for partly cloudy, etc. The yesterday column, however, includes numbers representing the actual precipitation levels in particular cities.
That all makes perfect sense. What bothers me is the list of international cities.
On that list, there is no column labeled “yesterday.” The “tomorrow” column has forecasts, as it should, but the “today” column has precipitation levels. Huh? How can the Morning News know that exactly .10 inches of rain will fall in Berlin today? And don’t trot out the “time zones” argument. That might explain the Asia-Pacific list, but it doesn’t fly when you’re talking about Canada or Mexico.
My contention is that the columns should be labeled “yesterday” and “today” instead of “today” and “tomorrow.” If that’s the case, they’ve been mislabeled for years and no one has noticed (except me). I tried to run this up the flagpole when I was a Belo employee, but I was mostly met with blank stares – sort of like the one on your face right now if you’ve read this far.
