For some people the misuse of apostrophes by a business affects how they think about that business. (See here.)
Maybe I’m old school, but badly edited content – poorly written copy, copy with obvious mistakes in it – affects how much I trust a news source.
The screen grab below comes from the iPad edition of The Age‘s report on the series-deciding Third Test between Australia and South Africa. The game ended just before 3am Australian Eastern Standard Time (and what a thrilling finish it was), so the paper did well to get the report out to local readers in time for breakfast. Unfortunately, the need for speed overran attention to detail.
This is an extreme example, but errors like these have become common even in reputable news outlets. Addiction to speed, cost-cutting production processes and a lack of care factor mean readers see mistakes made every day by organisations that want us to believe that their content can be trusted.
Do readers care? I do.