Commentary: Get The Name Right

Waiting for my breakfast sandwich in the Old Town Bakery, about a three-minute stroll from our digs on Grinnell Street in Key West, Fla., last week, I spied one of those free weekly newspapers. My first real editorial job out of college was at one of those rags, so I get a quick hit of nostalgia whenever I see one.

What’s in a name? A lot—especially if the name happens to be yours (click image to enlarge). Photo courtesy/copyright Pete Boden/Shoot 2 Thrill Pix.

This particular fish-wrapper—and I use that expression fondly as only a former newspaper person can—is called the Florida Weekly. And the front-page story of its Key West Edition was headlined, “The 39th Annual Key West Super Boat World Championships.”

The week prior on Thursday, October 31, the Key West Citizen, a local daily newspaper, ran a story in its Paradise section titled “Super Boat National Championship powers to Key West Nov. 6-8.”

For those of you who may have missed the most obvious and inexplicable error—meaning none of you—the Super Boat nomenclature is a product of Super Boat International, the former producer of the Key West races. Race World Offshore, on the other hand, the producer of this year’s races as well as the next four years of those races was not mentioned in either story. Nor were any of the classes, none of which—point being—are called “Super Boat” under the Race World Offshore umbrella.

I expected the Florida Weekly to butcher its explanation of offshore racing, and with lines such as “racing around a six-mile course in waves at speeds close to 200 mph” I wasn’t disappointed. But even the greenest editorial intern likely wouldn’t have gotten the name of the event wrong.

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