From the Thursday edition of the Morning Jolt:

Twitter Reveals the Vocabulary Limitations of Headline Writers
I think social media, particularly Twitter and the ability to dash off half-formed thoughts instantly, is making a lot of people in the world of news journalism dumber, or at least appear dumber. Look, none of us is perfect, none of us is born with complete knowledge of everything, and the desire to write a dramatic headline can obscure dry facts and leave the wrong impression. But some of these mistakes are difficult to excuse.
Reuters made two embarrassing mistakes while touting its coverage of ESPN’s decision to reassign sportscaster Robert Lee from a University of Virginia football game. The first was a Tweet declaring, “Confederate General Lee namesake pulled from upcoming University of Virginia football.”
Merriam-Webster gives Reuters a tiny sliver of coverage to the news agency on this usage, defining namesake “one that has the same name as another; especially one who is named after another or for whom another is named.” But Robert Lee, the Asian-American sportscaster, is not named after Robert E. Lee, the Confederate general. Reuters later deleted the original Tweet and offered another with a clarification.
The mistake that stuck in my craw was this Tweet: “Confederate General Lee doppelganger pulled from upcoming University of Virginia football broadcast.” Ever hear someone attempting to sound smart by using a word they just learned, but they use it incorrectly? That’s what we appear to have here with the person running Reuters’ Twitter account. Two people who share the same name are not doppelgangers.
The sound of the word hints at its German origins (it literally translates to “double walker” or “double goer”) and it comes from that culture’s mythology.
Doppelgänger is a German word many “double goer” and refers to a wraith or apparition that cast no shadows and is a replica or double of a living person. They were generally considered as omens of bad luck or even signs of impending death – a doppelgänger seen by a person’s relative or friend was said to signify that illness or danger would befall that person, while seeing one’s own doppelgänger was said to be an omen of death.
Some accounts of doppelgängers, sometimes called the ‘evil twin’ suggests that they might attempt to provide advice to the person they shadow, but that this advice can be misleading or malicious. They may also attempt to plant sinister ideas in their victim’s mind or cause them great confusion. For this reason, people were advised to avoid communicating with their own doppelgänger at all costs.
One of the more intriguing tales of a Doppelganger comes from Abraham Lincoln, who claimed to friends in 1860 he had seen two “separate and distinct” reflections of himself in a mirror. His account: “I never succeeded in bringing the ghost back after that, though I once tried very industriously to show it to my wife, who was somewhat worried about it. She thought it was a “sign” that I was to be elected to a second term of office, and that the paleness of one of the faces was an omen that I should not see life through the last term.”
Why yes, doppelgangers are a recurring concept in Twin Peaks.
Anyway, journalists and copy editors, if you don’t know what a word means, don’t use it in a headline.