Speaking of the Times…

It sometimes seems that the newspaper must not employ any reporters or editors more than sixteen years old. Its institutional memory is astonishingly bad, not just for what might loosely be termed ancient history, but even for events of the last few years. Here are two examples from this week’s corrections.
On Thursday, the Times made this embarrassing correction:
“An article on Saturday about a split in the California Republican Party over whom to endorse in the recall election misstated the time elapsed since Republicans last held the governor’s office. That occurred in 1999, not a decade ago.” Pete, we hardly knew ye.
And from today’s Times:
“An article in Business Day on Monday about plans by Motorola to produce a cellphone with e-mail and other computer capabilities using Microsoft’s Windows Mobile software misidentified one country in which it is to be sold. It is the Czech Republic; Czechoslovakia was dissolved in 1993.”
What are we to make of a supposedly major newspaper whose reporters and editors lack the knowledge that we would expect from a reasonably well-informed high school student?