A Barron's story full of errors

Neal Shanske writes on the Seeking Alpha web site about the demise of newspapers and his interest in reading them and cites the various errors in a recent Barron’s article as Exhibit A.

Shanske wrote, “Last week, the Bancroft family made much noise opposing News Corp.’s bid for Dow Jones, publisher of Barron’s and the Wall Street Journal. Despite the fact that the bid was 60% above the previous close, the deal appears dead on concerns that new ownership would threaten the paper’s integrity, independence and quality. Judging by an article appearing in this weekend’s Barron’s, a downward slide in quality has already begun.

“I was quite dismayed when I began reading the article in this week’s Barron’s on Delta Airlines’ prospects as it emerges from bankruptcy. I immediately noticed something amiss. Every ticker symbol in the article was wrong. As were multiple names. As were multiple words. PlaneBuzz has a copy of the article and a list of mistakes here. PlaneBuzz further reported Barron’s response to complaints:

The use of an automated spellchecker resulted in a number of errors in last week’s feature story about Delta Airlines. The company’s chief executive is Gerald Grinstein, and an analyst cited was Ray Neidl of Calyon Securities. Delta’s ticker symbol is DAL, US Airways’ is LCC. American Airlines’ parent is AMR, with the ticker AMR. A variety of other words also were garbled. A fully corrected version of the story is available for free on Barron’s Online, at www.barrons.com .

“Old media claims an advantage over blogs in terms of quality, but apparently, no human looks at the final version of articles appearing in this paper. I’ll probably continue to read Barron’s for now, and may even subscribe to a daily newspaper again. But I now see a day in the future when I won’t.”

Read more here.