Grin...

It's bits and pieces like this that are among the few things that have kept me from going "f*ck journalism" in the past few days. This is a from a letter to Jim Romenesko

For example, a friend of mine at The Virginian-Pilot wrote that beach erosion was greatest in one spot because there the water was "deeper closer to the shore." Unbeknownst to my friend, a helpful copy editor inserted an "and" between "deeper" and "closer," so my friend read in the morning paper, under his byline, that the water in one spot was "deeper and closer to the shore." Silly him, he'd always thought that water came clear up to the shore all along the beach.

(Of course I once wrote that a person always went for the juggler, and an editor saved me embarrassment by changing juggler to jugular. Admittedly, editors are necessary evils and occasionally forces for good.)

This is, of course, much funnier once you've done some sort of newspaper copy editing.