Never heard of Daniel Lippman? Neither had I until Husband Dear emailed a link to a story about him in Politico, with the subject line “Verbally Gifted Kid” and one sentence: “There is a future.”
The 19-year-old sophomore at George Washington University has become the Washington press corps’ independent fact checker, copy editor and link distributor extraordinaire. His e-mails almost always lead off with a soupçon of praise, such as “In your excellent article today,” followed by a link to the story and polite notification of a mistake, anything from a broken hyperlink to a misspelled name. He offers the correction — “It’s ‘Haass,’ not ‘Haas,’” he wrote in regard to the president of the Council on Foreign Relations — and often a link as proof. He signs off coolly: “Best, Daniel.”
He has sent notes correcting typos in White House pool reports and notes praising reporters’ appearances on television. Those who e-mail him also open themselves up to grammatical corrections.
Lippman mops up after the Beltway’s hacks so consistently that it’s a wonder he hasn’t yet flunked out of college. Scarcely a wanton apostrophe or misspelled name will appear in a story without Lippman’s quickly issuing forth an e-mail. — Given that there are still just 24 hours in the day, one has to wonder if Lippman has found some rip in the time-space continuum.
Evidently Lippman is something of a rock star to the Washington, DC press corps.
He first came to folk’s attention as a 15-year-old featured in a New Yorker “Talk of the Town” that described how he was routinely getting his questions answered by Bush administration officials in a weekly White House online Q&A session. These days, according to the article, he routinely reads 80 or so articles a day. “I like accuracy a lot.”
That made me smile. As the mom of a 15-year-old who routinely shouts with triumph “I found a typo!” and is a copy editor for a school publication, I totally get it.
UPDATE 12/26: Got a nice email from Daniel –
Just want to say that I’m glad you linked to the Politico story about me on your excellent blog!
Best,
Daniel Lippman
Loved this! My husband is an editor and I routinely point out errors to him (can you imagine how much he must love that? Could it be my snarkiness?). Sadly, I’m not a real grammar genious. Daniel sounds like the lovely copy editor supreme that I would wish to be.
Hi there….I saw the piece on Daniel Lippman today on Fox News Sunday. I really enjoyed it and found it refreshing for a young person such as Daniel to get involved like that. I enjoy grammar as well and obviously writing since I have a blog as well. Politics is an interest too. Anyway, nice bit on Daniel. I look forward to following your blog.
Mary Delaney
it is great that you look for detail, one of my gifts is finding errors in detail as well. I was an intern of Congress, too.
However that political avenue did not work out for me.