Nitpick of the day

From the story on the BaltSun’s new editor, in Editor & Publisher.

The most unique move, creation of a demographics beat, is based on the paper’s need to improve coverage of the city’s changing population, the editor said.

Two points:

1. Unique cannot be modified because it means “one of a kind.”
2. My employer has had a “Race and Demographics Team” for several years.

This is just careless writing that was missed on edit (or, I shudder to think, introduced by an editor; lately I never assume the writer is to wholly to blame for the words we see). Maybe not such a big deal but it goes to show why our professors harped on precision in word choice. The wrong word can introduce fact errors.