Regret the Error
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October 20, 2011 02:14 PM
The Story of the Gaddafi Story
How news of the Libyan leader's demise spread on Twitter
Earlier this morning news began to spread that something major was happening in Libya. At first it seemed that a convoy, likely belonging to those loyal to former leader Moammar Gaddfi, was under attack in/near Sirte. This was where his loyalists were holed up. Was Gaddafi there too? No one knew. But soon reports emerged that he may have been...
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October 6, 2011 01:46 PM
Journos Call For More Transparency at NYT Op-Ed Page
Toward a higher standard of disclosure
Just a bit after 11 a.m. this morning, New York Times public editor Arthur Brisbane received an e-mail from the Checks and Balances Project, a nonprofit government and industry watchdog group.
Attached to the message was a letter signed by fifty journalists and journalism educators calling on Brisbane to push the Times to meet a...
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September 30, 2011 12:35 PM
Unknown Quantities
How social network verification can show us what we don’t know
We don’t know.
Those are three difficult words for a journalist to say. For many, it's an admission of failure. We don’t know is a barrier to publication, dissemination. It means more work needs to be done, or that it’s time to stop and move on.
Seen another way, though, We don’t know is a starting point. You dig...
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September 16, 2011 12:23 PM
Eight Simple Rules for Doing Accurate Journalism
Some new, some old, some wonderfully clichéd
It’s a cliché to say clichés exist for a reason. As journalists, we’re supposed to avoid them like the, um, plague. But it’s useful to have a catchy phrase that can stick in someone’s mind, particularly if you’re trying to spread knowledge or change behaviour.
This week I began cataloguing some of my own sayings about accuracy — you can...
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September 9, 2011 01:19 PM
Calling Out a Source that Lied
The Memphis Commercial Appeal holds Schnucks accountable
As far as official denials go, it was clear and emphatic.
Lori Willis, communications director of the Schnucks grocery chain, issued this response after a reporter with the Memphis Commercial Appeal recently asked if the rumors were true that her company was selling its local stores to Kroger.
Typically, we would not comment on rumor and speculation, but I will...
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September 2, 2011 12:59 PM
Errors in Anytown, U.S.A.
Academic brings an anonymous newsroom's corrections practices to light
Last spring, Kirstie Hettinga spent several months working two days a week as an unpaid intern at what she will only describe as “a small, regional newspaper in the Northeastern United States.” Yes, like many interns, she’s a student, but this was an unpaid internship of a different order.
Hettinga is a Ph.D candidate at Penn State, and a visiting...
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August 19, 2011 12:00 PM
A Victim’s Tale
What it's like to be on the receiving end of a press error
Last week was a terrible one for Jon Harris, a librarian at the North Canton Public Library in Ohio. On Thursday he was smoking a cigarette on his front porch when a man walked up, pulled a gun, and demanded Harris hand over his money and laptop.
On Saturday he and his girlfriend arrived home to find all of the...
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August 12, 2011 12:39 PM
Schmidle in Secret
New Yorker keeps mum on fact-checking process for bin Laden piece
Amid the discussion and debate about the sourcing and accuracy of Nicholas Schmidle’s lengthy retelling of the Bin Laden raid in The New Yorker, we’ve failed to hear from one important group of people. They have the detailed information about the sourcing of the article, and spoke to Schmidle’s sources to confirm the details long before it was...
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July 29, 2011 11:35 AM
From Breaking News to Baseless Speculation
Why journalists jumped to conclusions about the Norway attacks
Why do journalists and news organizations exhibit such a lack of restraint when it comes to breaking news like last week’s events in Norway?
This is the question I’ve most frequently been asked in the week since the bloody attacks.
Many news organizations leapt to the conclusion that the bombing and shootings were the work of a jihadist terrorist...
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July 22, 2011 01:30 PM
What The Guardian Can Learn from Watergate Coverage
On the importance of making the “right” mistakes
Up until The New York Times Magazine published a lengthy piece last September that broke new ground in the News Corp. phone hacking scandal, The Guardian was basically the only media outlet that had pushed the story forward. As its editor, Alan Rusbridger, described in a recent article for Newsweek, “There seemed to be some omertà...
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July 15, 2011 11:35 AM
The Case for the Corrections Page
Why news organizations should follow the Times’s example
A website redesign is a major event for a news organization. Reuters recently unveiled a new website, and it occasioned blog posts from former editor-in-chief and current chairman of Thomson Reuters China David Schlesinger, and from Chrystia Freeland, the editor of Thomson Reuters Digital. She also introduced the #reutersrefresh hashtag to gather feedback from people.
That’s admittedly a...
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July 8, 2011 12:45 PM
Introducing the Grantland Corrections Desk
Deadspin picks up Bill Simmons’s slack
“Without looking it up, I can tell you the night the Toronto Blue Jays won their first World Series — October 24, 1992 — because that was also the night I lost my virginity.”
That’s how Esquire writer at large Chris Jones began his first column about the American League East for Grantland, the new sports website headed...
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July 1, 2011 01:19 PM
And on the Fender Bass, President Abraham Lincoln!
A humorous correction earns AAA World some praise
It wasn’t too long after the July/August issue of the mid-Atlantic edition of AAA World magazine reached subscribers that Mike Caddell and his colleagues began receiving the emails. When I spoke with him this week, he said they were still coming in.
This edition of AAA World is sent to over two million households in the mid-Atlantic region of...
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June 24, 2011 11:47 AM
Misquotes That Refuse to Die
Things that David Plouffe, Captain Kirk, and others didn’t say
Back in 2009, Barack Obama’s presidential campaign manager, David Plouffe, said some rather kind words about Utah governor Jon Huntsman, and he has probably been regretting them ever since.
As detailed this week by The New York Times Magazine’s Matt Bai, Plouffe’s comments were mangled into an erroneous quote that has been republished in outlets including The Economist,...
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Desks
The Audit Business
- Newspaper Companies As Emblems of the 1 Percent David Carr rips Gannett’s $37 million golden parachute
- ProPublica Has Questions for the SEC on Its Citi Settlement
The Observatory Science
- Get a Life (Beyond the Web) Science writers struggle with time management
- The Scientist Lives LabX Media Group signs intent to purchase
Campaign Desk Politics & Policy
- A Grand Year for Free Speech Gaddafi’s death just one indicator of the global surge in free expression
- The Human Faces behind the Social Security Rhetoric Good work from CBS News
