Nitpicker's Delight

The Maven has often been ridiculed for being not just a nitpicker, but a world-class nitpicker. 

Guilty as charged!

It's an easy job when local media often puts so little focus on accuracy in order to be the first, fastest, or best-looking news source. 

For example: 

Here are the nits, by the numbers:

1: "stabbed in Fort Wayne's southeast side". First this conflicts with the body copy that states "near the southeast side of Fort Wayne". So, did the stabbing happen within the confines of the southeast side of town or NEAR the confines of the southeast side of town? Further, the Maven could be a real ass and ask: "southeast side? Is that near the spleen or stomach where the stabbing occurred". However, the Maven won't do that. Bad taste.

2: 4:45pm is not "Sunday evening". Uh, the generally accepted definitions of afternoon and evening indicate that evening begins at 5:00 pm. 4:45 pm is almost "evening"...but it's still inaccurate.

Here's a chart that might help in the future:

3: This ties into number 1, above. If you check your Rand McNally, the 3900 block of Congress is CLEARLY withing the generally-accepted area known as Southeast Fort Wayne. Saying it's NEAR southeast Fort Wayne is confusing, and causes concerns that local media might be trying to downplay the reports of violent crime in that area by misstating the local of the crime. 

4: This is a pet peeve. "DISPATCH confirmed..." Which DISPATCH? The Fort Wayne Police dispatch. Fort Wayne Fire dispatch? Three Rivers Ambulance dispatch? DoorDash dispatch? Please be specific. Using the general term of DISPATCH is lazy and does not completely name the official source of the information.  

For contrast here's how the other local TV news operation in town alerted us to the story: