Movement on extra credit scoreboard - Jessica M. and Michael S. tally points

Jessica M. and Michael S. both have earned points by raising questions about items on The Flint Journal's Web site.

Jessica M. received three points by raising multiple issues in recent entries. They were:

• In a photo cutline, she found a typo of "beek" instead of "been" in a March 3 story about the Manhattan Place condos in Flint. This is a good catch and relevant to last week's reading because sometimes it's easier for cutlines to contain errors because not as many people look at them before they are published either online or in print.
• Along similar lines, Jessica M. found a typo in a headline in a Feb. 25 story about a man dying after he was hit by a train.
• In the same story, she also questioned the use of the word "instantly" when describing the man's death. I think this a point-worthy question to raise. However, I would justify The Journal's use of it because it's coming from the police, who are using it to explain a key fact in the story.

Michael S. found three style and grammar errors in a March 5 story about General Motors laying off 185 employees at the Grand Blanc Weld Tool Center. They were:

• Work force was spelled as one word.
• The following sentence failed to include a comma after "air," which was needed because there was an independent clause following the conjunction: "UAW Local 1292 Shop Chairman Matt Teachenor said the specifics of the layoff remain up in the air, but he hopes the layoffs don't last."
• The word "worker" near the end of the story needed to be "workers" to agree with the rest of the sentence.

He also pointed out an odd character that appeared in the text. This is some sort of system bug that the site experiences, but that's not an excuse, so there's a point.

These new totals keep Michael S. in the lead, with Jessica M. moving up into a solid third right behind John McKay.