I'll leave the finance bit to the pros, but if you want an insufferably pedantic, nit-picking proofreader to pick up on your dangling modifiers (oo-er, missus!) — why, that's practically what I do for a living!
Jill Kerby was on holidays recently. I was invited to write the "comment" column for the Sunday Times that week. My brief was that I had to have a piece written by Wednesday afternoon on personal finance issues that arose over the weekend and early that week. It was not easy. But for me it was a once off. I was able to write something. Think about it. Polish it a bit. And I had it ready on time. I would not like to have to do it every week.
Yeah - but chances are a personal finance journalist not like writing software or recruiting accountants every week. The difference is that writing personal finance articles is their choice of job from which they earn a living just like mine and yours are the other ones that I mentioned. Would I get away with writing crap code every week or you get away with recruiting inept accountants? No - so why should personal finance journalists get away with writing crap? I do agree with your point about not everybody (or even many people) being that interested in such articles though!
I have to say that I really like the sports in the Sunday Times. Comprehensive, some journalists are full of crap, but in general I think it's quite good.
To qualify what I meant, my dad finds the section covers Cricket, Rugby and Soccer fine - but not GAA and its GAA he's particularly interested in. He also resents the amount of space given to 'english' subjects throughout the paper and in the sports section. I don't really read the sports in the ST as I get my info from bbc.com (and other sites), the tv and attending actual games.
One of their GGA writers (M. Foley maybe?) isn't worth toilet paper. I've stopped reading him since the summer. Re. the other sports, it is only an Irish edition of an English paper, so it's not perfect for an Irish audience. However I feel that their coverage of the Premiership, Champions League, ERC and other rugby is top class. However, this is going OT (Sorry Dr. M.-I'm sure there are some grammitcal errors as well!)
Yeah - but chances are a personal finance journalist not like writing software or recruiting accountants every week. The difference is that writing personal finance articles is their choice of job from which they earn a living just like mine and yours are the other ones that I mentioned. Would I get away with writing crap code every week or you get away with recruiting inept accountants? No - so why should personal finance journalists get away with writing crap? I do agree with your point about not everybody (or even many people) being that interested in such articles though!
'Crap' journalism is kind of hard to define, no? A lot of it depends on the reader and what they expect from the article. There isn't really any excuse for consistently producing inaccurate or false information, but issues of depth and perspective really would depend on the sophistication of the reader. For example, I think the article in this thread is pretty poor, as it is pretty much just an ad for fixed rate mortgages-there is no appraisal of the advantages and disadvantges of same. However, it could be argued that the purpose of the piece is merely to inform readers that fixed rates are likely to increase in the next few days, so if you're thinking of fixing, better to do it sooner rather than later.