Above, AI illustrates various “people familar with the matter.”
Written by Jaron Summers (c) 2023
In the good old days when I was earning a degree in journalism from Brigham Young University, people familiar with the sources, said that a grievous error resulted when I ended up as editor of BYU’s newspaper, The Daily Universe.
As people familiar with geography will tell you, The Daily Universe was published in Provo, Utah, where BYU has a campus of about 34,000 students.
As historians, familiar with north and south, point out The Daily Universe was misnamed. Our student newspaper seldom mentioned planets or stars. The last time our august publication mentioned anything about Provo was fifty-three years ago.
World news occasionally made the second page. And, then the event would have to be awesome. Something like China prepares to nuke our student center.
Any member of our staff who uses a source has to identify the source. No one ever heard of a course such as People Familiar with the Matter.
According to editors familiar with common sense, if you quote a witness, you must give us the person’s name, home address and hair color.
Next time you fail to supply an accurate name for a source, you’re fired!
Got it?
Those familiar with watches will tell you that we live in different times.
And those familiar with their noses will tell you today, that failing to identify a source stinks!
