I've been reading local news sites the last few weeks and every day I find at least 1-3 different mistakes in the articles. An example would be today when I read about an attempted bank robbery in my town, the journalist used the phrase "white baggie shirt" instead of white baggy shirt to describe the clothes the guy was wearing. I find tons of things like this. Even basic things like using the wrong form of, they're, their, or there. I'm not the best writer but I swear I could do a better job than these idiots with college degrees. Wtf is going on?

Edit: another one that really got me was the journalist was talking about record suicides taking place on a bridge around here. She wrote that the bridge was "940 feet" tall at the top of the span. I thought to myself wtf? no way that bridge is that high. So I googled it and found within 2 minutes the correct height. It wasn't even a typo it is like she just invented the number.

Nah it's just that social media is being ran by stupid people for stupid people

But it's local news stations that have TV channels and stuff. You would think they would be able to hire competent people to write their articles.

Nobody watches cable TV anymore besides old people.

I'm talking about the local news websites. They have websites they post articles on. Like an online newspaper.

Everything changed in 2012

I am curious as to whether people are getting dumber (just caught the tail end of Idiocracy the other day), but idk if news articles are a good source for that.

One thing I've heard about the increase in mistakes in articles is just that these days, articles need to get out so fast, so that means the journalist is rushed and there's less (if any editing), so yeah, they're going to make more mistakes.

I dunno why tf people have started throwing apostrophes everywhere though. I blame the people who said acronyms with apostrophes were optional. Cowards.

There were hundreds of blue checkmark twitter people the other day that though Trump at the debate meant actual coyotes, like the animal coyote, were smuggling humans across the border from mexico. One lady was an attorney and a member of Georgia state house of reps.

Edit: also when I broke a bone easily the Doctor told me I need to take more calcium in my diet and I asked her if I should take phosphorus supplements too. She was like why would you take phosphorus. I said because bones are 50% phosphorus. She said she never heard that before and dont take phosphorus. I went home and looked it up because I thought maybe I learned it wrong but no she was wrong. Bones are 50% phosphorus.

Word has autocorrect so not even sure how they can make typos in newspapers

they aren't stupid but the people they pander to are, politicians pander to the lowest common denominator because they are the ones who aren't able to form their own opinions and need to be told how to think.

that's how it has and always will be

lol have you ever seen the movie Idiocracy?

Fewer people reading books for pleasure
Reliance on spell checking and autocorrect
Time pressure and laziness

Considering these points, it's no wonder basic literacy is lacking. I'm not much of prescriptivist zealot, but if you're trying to be a fukking journalist you should do your due diligence and learn to fukking spell.

Probably written by some sucker whos only experience is "social media" and the job only paid $10 an hour, when the highly experienced, bachelor's degree people were wanting 75k-100k salary.

Yes, there are many reasons such as a bad funcioning dopmine system....Covid brain damage as well. Or they way covid screws with serotonin and dopamine. Social media like Tik tok and such fukk with the attention span.

Hardly anyone reads actual books anymore, they think they can google everything and understand it, or even worse sum it up in a meme on ********. Google and the internet are very useful, but on more complex or historical subjects you can hardly sum up a 60,000 word book in a sentence or two, yet people do it all the time. Its a compounding problem too, as the years go on the explanations for even for world wars get dumbed down more and more until eventually people think Indiana Jones or Inglorious Basterds are "basically what happened"
You'd think with most of the information mankind has amassed over the years at our fingertips we'd be smarter more informed group of people, yet the opposite seems to be happening.

*This response is itself is, ironically, an over simplification