Right now, at 4:50 a.m. Eastern, a headline on the New York Times' Web site reports on the effects of the market crash on the relative wealth of the world's wealthiest people:
Buffett Pips Gates to Top New Forbes List: Report
Pips? Let's go to the Reuters story. All the way to the bottom:
(Reporting by Ajay Kamalakaran in Bangalore, editing by Will Waterman)
It's only natural to use wire stories written by overseas reporters during the hours when the reporters at home are all asleep. But might the Times spare one person to stay up and translate the Reuters copy from incomprehensible British or Indo-British English into American? Previously, the problem seems to have been confined to the sports desk, where late-night Reuters stories on nytimes.com have announced "Cubs Mount Spectacular Fightback to Edge the Rockies" and "Verlander on Song in Tigers Victory Over White Sox" ("on song" appears to mean that Justin Verlander was bowling well). Now the indifference has spread to the business desk. Oh, well. It's not as if very much important business news might break overnight.
