Mr. Toy's Mental Notes

Honestly, is Herald management even aware that their guy covering Carmel doesn't know the territory? It has become painfully obvious that reporter Tom Leyde has never spent any significant time learning about the town, beyond what he's spoon-fed at city council meetings. I have documented numerous careless errors on his part, most recently in my November 7th Mental Note . Today, in an article about the town's experiment with parking meters Leyde magically relocated the north Sunset Center parking lot from the corner of Mission and 8th to "Junipero Street between Third and Fifth avenues." That is more or less the location of the Vista Lobos parking lot (on 3rd between Junipero and Torres) which he didn't place anywhere. At least he finally figured out that Carmel's numbered streets are "avenues" and not "streets." ________________ Elsewhere in today's Herald the weekly "Bits 'N' Bytes" column was publi

Herald Boo-Boos are piling up on my desk. Time to clean it off . I am unable to reproduce an image of boo-boo #32 because it was just a teensy bit too large to fit on my scanner. So you'll have to be content with a written description. There was an editorial on Sunday November 16th entitled China climate change pact changes debate . It was under the heading "The Herald's View" which I found peculiar because I wouldn't expect our puny, semi-local Herald editorial board to tackle such a significant international topic. And I was right, for at the end it was signed "Bay Area News Group" indicating that it originated with a San Francisco Bay Area newspaper, and not the Herald. Typically editorials written elsewhere are listed under the heading "Other Views" so their origins are clear. __________ Number 33 was on page B-1 of that same day . It had an interesting story about the grave of a dog located at Carmel's Forest Theater. It i

( Sing to the tune of the Big Bang Theory theme song . ) Our e-conomy was in a stable state, Then nearly thirteen years or so ago Bush tax cuts started, Wait, The deficits ballooned, Bernard Madoff began to croon, Bad housing loans had really zoomed, We started wars, FINANCED BY CHINESE LOANS! Math, science, common sense, Were treated as impediments, Which led to the fall of big banks, BANKS!

Just when I thought the Herald was starting to clean up its act and put the Boo-Boo Watch out of business two more careless errors dropped onto our front porch Tuesday morn. Boo-Boo #30 came in the form of a strange headline indicating that a new Senate chairman was planning a border. That's funny. I thought our country already had borders. Based on the content of the article, the headline would have made perfect sense if the word "bill" was tacked on the end, but it wasn't so it didn't. Incomplete sentences seemed to be the theme of the day. In a guest commentary the writer identified himself in his opening sentence as representing "The Planning and Conservation League." But in the little biographical blurb at the end Harold identified him as a member of "the Planning and Conservation." I guess the new space-saving policy at the Herald is just to lop off words when you run out of room. The remaining words still mean the same thin

The good news today is that Herald boo-boos seem to be coming less frequently, but this week we had two. A couple of months ago a new reporter named Tom Leyde started covering Carmel news. In reading his stories I get the impression that the man has never spent much time in Carmel, and he doesn't seem to know his way around. Worse, he has written reports containing significant factual errors. I discussed two of these in detail in part 13 and part 14 of the Herald Boo-Boo Watch. Since then I was beginning to think that maybe he was starting to get the lay of the land. His reports on the happenings at city hall were in accord with reports from other sources. However, Leyde's reports were limited to city council activities. They did not require a broader knowledge of the town layout and features, and unfortunately his ignorance of the territory became glaringly evident again this week. In Tuesday's paper dated November 4th Leyde wrote about the council's decision