Fowling is a new sport that is launching into the national media with serious oomph. With a special on PBS dropping in October, plenty of local news interviews in the can, and having hosted events for the likes of Dan Gilbert's and Mike Ilitch’s organizations, fowling is local success story and a hot-button subject.
However, some poor journalists can’t seem to get the bizarre concept of throwing a football at bowling pins right. Or they may have thrown back a few too many “mystery beers” at the bar. Aside from copy errors a middle school student could correct, there is a serious discrepancy between fowling and fiction in an article on a website called suffieldtimes.com.
One such gem: “The power options 20 lanes, the place gamers or groups you need to be the primary to knock down all 10 in their fighters’ bowling pins by way of tossing a unmarried soccer from a distance of as much as 48 ft.”
We’re not sure what an “unmarried soccer” is, but we hope it isn’t too scandalous.
Is it time for a round of black coffee and aspirin in the Suffield Times’ news room?
Actually, a little bit of further digging shows that the article in question appears to be a (poorly) plagiarized version of a story that originally appeared in the Detroit Free Press. Other stories on the suffieldtimes.com website appear to be equally as garbled, and all use the "Times Staff" byline.
We're guessing this is part of some automated ad-driven clickbait scheme. Is this the future of journalism? But while robots are getting ready to steal our jobs, we can use the original Free Press story to decode the "Suffield Times" mess:
"a touchdown" = “a landing together”
"a single football" = "a unmarried soccer"
"Great Lakes freighter" = "Nice Lakes freighter"
"175-seat beer garden" = "175-seat beer lawn"
"tosses a football during a round of Fowling" = "tosses a soccer throughout a spherical of Fowling"
"This will work in any major city," he said, "and we really want to target the college towns." = “This may paintings in any primary town,” he stated, “and we actually need to goal the school cities.”
Dennis Burcke is an intern for Metro Times.
