New Year’s wish: Editors hired.

Couple stories in the Boston Globe business section Dec. 28, 2019, makes one wonder if reporters took a reporting class or if there are no editors any longer at the paper. Or both. Story about a proposed $870 million high-rise project adjoining South Station says it will eventually provide 2.5 million square feet of offices, condos and a hotel, at what is now the station’s railbed and bus terminal. How many readers have the slightest idea of how much space is 2.5 million square feet? (A quick bit of third-grade arithmetic reveals it is the equivalent of 108.5 football fields.) The first phase will be a 678-foot tower. But how many stories? Oh, way down, in the next last paragraph, you discover a first tower will be 51-stories, and in the last paragraph, you discover two later phases will be a 349-foot hotel or residential building and a 279-foot office building. But how many stories? Go figure, cause the Globe doesn’t say. It probably wasn’t in the press release.

Next page, there’s an AP story about the ongoing strike in France. The story points out that the strike has lasted 23 days, and this is record-breaking since it has lasted “more than three weeks.” This is good to know, since most readers have no idea whatsoever that one week has seven days and three times seven is 21. The story explains the strike is due to the government’s push for “retirement overhaul” which would “raise the official pension eligibility age to 64.” One would obviously ask, ” Raise to 64 from what?” AP evidently figures everyone knows what the French retirement age is.

Here’s a New Year’s wish: John Henry, owner of the Boston Red Sox, sells a few highly-paid pitchers, who aren’t doing much for the team, and uses the money to hire some sorely-needed copy editors for the Globe, which he also owns.

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