26 November—The bad news today isn’t really news at all. Just bad. And not even newsworthy, when you get down to it. Yesterday the Waterbury Republican-American published yet another massive blunder that a copy editor should have and could have caught and corrected. The latest inexcusable monumental erratum was no less than rerunning Friday’s entire puzzle and TV listing page on Saturday instead of Saturday’s. (Yes, all puzzle and TV listing pages do look alike—until you read them.)

Should have, could have, certainly would have. Probably would have, anyway. A copy editor is in fact listed and pictured among the Republican-American newsroom staff. He’d ordinarily be given the sack because he hasn’t been doing his job for the gods know how long. Problem is, he probably doesn’t have time to read, edit, or correct copy because he’s writing copy.

Because the copy editor, it happens, is working as a feature writer, what we’d call a culture writer and reviewer—and a pretty good one at that. So why can’t he be called a feature writer?

If the poor putative copy editor ever does get around to copy editing, he’s probably too exhausted to keep from falling asleep. It’s hard for even a fully alert proofreader to keep from nodding off. But only one copy editor for a print and online newspaper the size of the Republican-American is unforgivable, even though, like most other newspapers, it’s shrinking in pages as well as paper circulation.

Errors of any sort should be inexcusable, except that nobody seems to give a damn about accuracy in any media these days, because you can’t believe anything you read or see, anyway, and not just because of artificial intelligence; most people don’t notice and don’t give a damn about factual errors of any magnitude; and, judging by volume of bylined content, virtually everybody at the Republican-American is doing double duty at the paper to keep it going and their jobs in the bargain.

Or moonlighting just in case . . .