Did I tell you about the time a friend put my thoughts and picture into her article in Inquirer? It was about high school valedictorians and where they are now. No, I don’t think I ever mentioned it because when that article was published back in 2007, they printed the wrong photo under my name! (It was the author’s photo instead.) And even when the author told them of their mistake, they never rectified the error. Bah.

I bring this up now because I have an article in the Inquirer today (June 27) on pages C1 and C4. It irks me every time I read it, instead of giving me a sense of pride that I’ve finally been published in a mainstream broadsheet.

Okay, I know we’re all supposed to edit before we send copy to our editor, but they’re supposed to catch the small errors and fix them so that the newspaper maintains its grammar and spelling standards, right? They’re supposed to catch the missing article in this sentence: Add the mix local cosplay communities organizing their own conventions and contests, and you have a cosplay boom in the Philippines. It’s two letters. Sigh.

My biggest disappointment in this article is that I was asked to write a sidebar about places to acquire costumes and other accessories. I did my research and sent a beautifully-formatted document to them that clearly defined section headings and the entries under each section. When the article came out, my two costume-makers had been compacted into one entry and my wig suppliers had been placed under Weapons/Armor! That is just plain wrong, not to mention silly.

When I first was given this assignment, it was because I had knowledge about cosplay and the community and would write about the topic with the respect and intelligence it deserved, instead of a “parachute journalist” coming in from outside. Somewhere along the line towards publication, there was a disconnect between that objective and just getting it all into print.

Oh, Inquirer. I expected more from you. But maybe based on my first experience, I shouldn’t have?

Tags: Philippine Daily Inquirer, Erratum, Cosplay