It was one eight year term, punctuated mid-way with an election.

Clearly, they meant to say that he stepped down after a single episode.

The sad thing is that the series John Adams makes it fairly clear that he served two terms.

That sounds like an AP type of mistake.

Hence the tradition of never having the same man get more than two terms

FDR ring a bell?

In defense of the LATimes editors, it is from their television critic, and editors have traditionally not bothered with checking entertainment reporters. It could very well be that no one read the article before it was printed besides the author.

Anyone can have a synaptic misfire/senior moment/brain fart which we can charitably consider M. McNamara's gaff as - so everything in a newspaper should be checked by at least a copy editor. However copy editors cost money, and a spell check program is cheap and can do 90% of a copy editor's job, so there is an increasing reliance on them. I've seen too many of these type of mistakes in newspapers increasingly over the past 10 years to get upset about one in a television critic's article (the Wall Street Journal converted shoals to shores in a FRONT PAGE news article the other day, that I got upset about), newspapers just don't have people reading them before publication anymore. Back in the old days before it went to press an article was read by a copy editor, layout editor and a typesetter each of whom would have had a chance to catch an author's error, these days that is all done by a computer which doesn't have a general knowledge base to draw on and stupid errors make it through all the time.

One of many: I agree that mistakes happen, but I had thought that one of the advantages of newspapers such as the Times was that there were indeed editors, in all sections, that could catch the mistakes. Are there really no extra eyeballs besides the author's on the articles in the Calendar section? How about Business, or California, or other sections?

No, actually, it was reviewed by a copy editor, a layout editor and a spell checker. THAT is the scary thing about it...

David

EV,
There should be more people who can catch these types of mistakes, but there aren't. But the Calendar (?) editor isn't going to pay much, if any, attention to a reliable TV critic who has been with the paper for a few years, maybe a quick glance to see if the word count was right for the space. Much as we'd all like to believe that editors read everything that goes into the newspaper, many of them are perfectly willing to pass without looking a weekly article by a reliable writer. I a pretty sure the same thing does happen in the Business section of many newspapers, California probably not as it is a news section and news editors consider the articles to be whole point of the newspaper instead of filler.

It wasn't as much a problem in the past because there were eyes checking for this sort of thing, so editors could be confident that bozo mistakes like this would be caught even though they were passing stuff based upon the writer's reputation. In theory copy editors, typesetters etc don't actually read articles so replacing them with computer programs doesn't make a difference - in practice one of them would have noticed something glaring like this and brought it to the attention of the Calender editor. Certainly editors should be checking for this sort of mistake, but many of them are behind the technological curve and still behave as if technology hasn't removed all the redundancy in the system. As for the LATimes, they need (and have needed for a long time) a well informed fact checker who actually reads the entire paper, in addition to the ones who fact-check articles in rough-draft form if they are sent to the fact-checkers.

Could be donaldk, I personally suspect it was a spell-check conversion, regardless of how it happened I find it more upsetting in a front page news story than an error in a TV critic's piece.

But, this may very well be true in the L.A. Times's universe!

Hell, I'm glad I read this thread, I always thought Hanna Montana was the first US President.

As for the LATimes, they need (and have needed for a long time) a well informed fact checker who actually reads the entire paper, in addition to the ones who fact-check articles in rough-draft form if they are sent to the fact-checkers.

As a regular reader of the LA Times, I can strongly agree with this. I get pissed off when I read blatant factual misstatemens in the Letters; finding them in articles is inexcusable. But it happens far too often.

BT: Dude, Hanna Montana was the first state.

@daveinboca:

Yes, GW really didn't want the second term. I seem to recall hearing of a resignation later (apparently never sent), but I can't find a citation for that here. Here's about the strongest statement that I can locate:

For Washington, a more immediate and personal problem was the approaching presidential election of 1792. Early in his first administration he had made the decision to retire at the end of a single term, and wishing above all else "to return to the walks of private life," he balked at reversing it, the more so since for the moment the foreign scene appeared serene and domestic developments, particularly the success of Hamilton's economic program, gratifying. But would the rift in his official family oblige him to reconsider his earlier decision to retire? Pressure to do so crowded in from every quarter, from north and south, from private citizens and official colleagues. Among the latter, none were more importunate than the principal rivals of his cabinet, who suspended their acrimonious disagreement on everything else political to urge the president to stand for reelection.

Neither Hamilton's nor Jefferson's pleas, nor those of many other prominent Americans, had any effect on the president's unwillingness to announce his candidacy for reelection. Nevertheless, over the months following his return to Philadelphia from Mount Vernon in October 1792, Washington continued to remain mute. Predictably no rival candidate presented himself, and there was not even a whisper that one would. Aware that he was in a field of one, Washington certainly knew that the electorate would take his silence for assent, and it did. On 13 February 1793 the electoral college unanimously elected him to a second term. His running mate, John Adams, was also returned to office, although by a vote of only seventy-seven to fifty. To Washington, now past sixty and in poor health, what others saw as an electoral triumph was rather another four-year sentence to what he described to Jefferson as "the extreme wretchedness of his existence."

Anyway, what's really odd about this is the asymmetry of the reporter's statement. On one hand, the writer is claiming to have an intimate knowledge of Washington's motivations. On the other hand, he doesn't know what every 3rd grader knows.

It makes me wonder what other reporting I've accepted because the level of detail gives the look of research, when the higher-level content is nonsense.

That's "Schlesinger."

in what sense does he "step down"

chooses not to run.

...The Times should face the music and make sure that McNamara's Banned.

Functionally illiterate editors chosen for their political views. That's why they're the Ass. Press.

BT and EV: BOTH wrong!

Hannah, Montana is the location of Mt. Rushmore. Which, by coincidence, has a likeness of President Washington--as well as Adams, Lincoln, and of course President Rushmore.

The Deciders!

With multiple layers of editors and fact-checking....