STILL QUOTATIONALLY-CHALLENGED at the New York Times?
UPDATE: Reader Greg Wallace writes:
This is going to make me sound old, because it was way back in ’78 that I got my BA in journalism. Virtually all of my journalism professors in college taught us that it is acceptable to “clean up” quotes if the context remains intact and the meaning is not altered. My editors throughout the years since have consistently maintained that position. I think the Times is a goiter on the body of journalism, but I’d save this fight for another day.
Funny that nobody else cleaned this one up, though. And while I’m not terribly offended at the practice, I think it’s going to raise more hackles in the Internet age where such comparisons are easier.
ANOTHER UPDATE: Reader Don Burton emails:
Contrary to the guy who commented that it was normal to “clean up” language in a quote, I don’t think that quite gets the NYT off the hook in this instance. Besides the empirical evidence that no other source saw a need to clean up the football coach’s quote, I would add two points:
1. By thinking the quote needed “cleaning up” the NYT is assuming that the coach mispoke, or spoke out of ignorance of grammatically correct English. Unless you’re sure either of those is the case, you shouldn’t alter the quote. However, I think it’s equally likely that the coach a) is comfortable saying “ain’t” and is not ashamed to use the colloquial speech of the region; b) uses “ain’t” because he knows that coaches are expected to use tough, earthy language; c) wants the fans in Mississippi to know that he’s as down-home as them despite his recent sojourn in Yankee-dom; or d) some mixture of a, b, and c. I lean towards possibilty b), but I find it objectionable in any event for the Times just to assume the quote needs cleaning up.
2. As an amateur Timesologist, I suspect what’s really behind the change is that the version of PC that seeps into everything the Times reports on dictates that you can’t have an African-American public figure saying “ain’t.”
I agree.