The state paper is, well, the state paper. Honestly, I don't expect journalistic excellence. I just expect competence.

Which is apparently too much.....

They have a photo gallery, prominently featured on the website, of the ATA Worlds Tournament last weekend (mainly the Opening Ceremonies at ALLTEL Arena).....

ATA = American Taekwondo Association, which calls Little Rock home.

Worlds is the single largest conference/competition held in AR. It brings 20 - 30,000 people to downtown LR from 17 countries, and a huge amount of revenue.....

LR and NLR and state officials speak at the opening ceremonies and issue welcoming letters in ATA materials.....

And yet the state paper, in all it's glory, calls it 'kick boxing'.....

Here's the letter I emailed the state news editor:....

Mr. Shameer,....

I was surprised to see a major inaccuracy on the arkansasonline.com website. A photo gallery from the 2008 ATA Worlds Competition Opening Ceremony at ALLTEL Arena is prominently featured, under the title '2008 ATA Kick Boxing'.....

ATA Worlds competition is the single largest conference/competition in Arkansas, bringing 20,000 people to the state and million in revenue, and the Democrat Gazette calls the Taekwondo association 'kick boxing'. The most inexperienced reported should have found out what ATA stands for, and realized that nowhere in the opening ceremonies or tournament is 'kick boxing' used, because it isn't kick boxing, it's taekwondo.....

This is very offensive to an organization that calls ....Arkansas.... home: the state paper doesn't even bother to
get the name of the martial art ATA promotes right (and it's in the organization's name!). PLEASE get this fixed and issue an apology to an organization that brings a great number of tourists to ..Central AR.., along with a big revenue boost.....

Would the paper carelessly call horse racing 'dog racing'? I don't think so. Similarly, kick boxing and taekwondo are different animals.....

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Sigh.....

Pathetic.