The Sad States Of Nightly News

On Saturday's story about the 2012 Republican presidential hopefuls, a Nightly News graphic identified Mitt Romney as the former governor of "Massachussetts". It's appalling that the Nightly News producers can't even manage to correctly spell "Massachusetts". But it's hardly surprising. On the Jan. 1 broadcast, the producers spelled Pennsylvania as "Pennslyvania". They just don't care. Maybe the Nightly News producers shouldn't attempt to spell any state names--they should just use the two-letter state abbreviations. Oh wait--that's not a good idea. They can't get those right, either. Last Tuesday (and also on the 4/23/10 broadcast), the producers mistakenly abbreviated Arkansas as "AK" when they should have abbreviated it as "AR". I once saw a five-year-old kid on David Letterman's show who could correctly spell the names of all fifty states. I think the Nightly News powers-that-be should hire him as a senior producer. After all, he's probably ten or eleven by now.