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People leave all sorts of comments on Mercury stories when they’re put up on social media.
Some of those comments are actually helpful and might provide more information for a journalist to chase up.
But there are also those who make what really are rookie errors when it comes to posting comments.
The obvious one is the person who wants to highlight some spelling or grammatical mistake in the story, while also making mistakes of their own in the comment.
They might feel really superior about it, but the impression they leave on others is very much the opposite.
The same goes for the good old “slow news day” jibe. This is one that gets attached to any story the person deems to be not worthy of coverage – even though they just read the story.
You see, newspapers look to have a mix of serious stories and lighter fare – it’s been that way for ages.
So posting a “slow news day” comment might make you feel all warm and smug inside but you actually come across as a little clueless to those in the know.
One mistake would seem to be totally avoidable but happens every day. That’s the person who leaves a comment on a story which makes it abundantly clear that they haven’t read the story at all.
Seems to me actually reading the story before making any comments is a completely sensible approach.
Yet time and again, people just seem to read the headline of a story on Facebook and then fire off an angry missive.
I’ve copped criticism for overlooking something when the very thing they claim I’ve overlooked is mentioned in the story – sometimes just three or four paragraphs in.
The irony is that the people who do that will never get this information as it right down the bottom of this column – and they’ll never read that far.