AP and Spelling/Grammar Errors

Yeah, okay so this is a lame start to my blog but something that just sends me into a bat$hit frenzy.  I don't follow everything the Associated Press posts online or everything they put out for wire reports but I keep finding spelling errors and grammatical errors in their stories.  Last week was a story where the freaking headline was "Fed ID's companies that used crisis aid programs".  Yes, ID apostrophe -s.  Today I'm reading a story about a Japanese satellite that missed Venus and the article says the satellite may have "flown passed" the planet.  Of course this should have read "flown past".

Instances like this burn me most because I didn't graduate college but got two and a half years into a degree in English.  I'm sure I wouldn't be hired by AP or any other news gathering agency where some rudimentary grasp of the English language would be expected of its writers.  The greater problem here is that these stories are making it to the web.  Apparently there is no editor checking the pieces over or the editor checking them over doesn't catch the errors.  The latter error wouldn't be caught by a spell checker.  So this brings up the question of whether we're too reliant on software to handle issues like this even in a business like journalism.

The AP doesn't put out enough stories in a day to justify anything slipping past (not passed) a second set of eyes at some point.  I'd gladly hire myself out to proofread if they need a proofreader.

Trust me; I'll delve into more important issues in this blog but much of what you'll read will be little gripes like this.  I think the underlying issue here is that people are getting through American colleges and universities with a general lack of some pretty basic knowledge.  It's been several years since I was in high school or college and I know for a fact that neither one of these errors would have escaped some red ink and a little message about correct usage.  Is there a substitute for this method employed now?  Has grammar gone the way of history and political studies?  Is grammar not a prerequisite for advanced journalism courses?  I honestly want to know how you get a job working for the AP when you make stupid mistakes like these.  Unfortunately the writers of both stories give their bylines but I could find no bio on either one to find out where they got their degrees.

Here are both stories:  http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20101202/ap_on_bi_ge/us_fed_crisis_lending_17#mwpphu-container    and      http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20101208/ap_on_sc/as_japan_venus_probe

I seriously promise more provocative material to come.