Not a day goes by that readers or this newspaper’s editors can’t find a mistake of some kind in the paper. Fortunately, most are much smaller in nature than one that occurred on Page One a few weeks ago. It was a story that had most of the criteria editors look for in a story for Page One publication.
- It was important — to a vast number of readers.
- It had impact — on almost everyone’s pocketbooks.
- It was happening here.
- It was happening soon.
- It also happened to be wrong — in one important fact.
The story reminded readers that they’d soon have to shell out an extra penny to mail their routine cards, letters and utility bills. It introduced, in words and graphic, a new 33-cent stamp celebrating the Chinese New Year with a picture of a hare.
All that was correct.
But in both words and another graphic, it also identified a second stamp, featuring Uncle Sam’s bannered top hat, as the one-cent stamp most of us will need to buy to be able to use up all of our old 32-centers.
That was wrong.
The stamp with Uncle Sam’s bannered top hat, which also carried the letters USA and a large capital H, was not the one-cent stamp, but an additional 33-cent stamp. And it was one may people had already purchased in anticipation of the postage increase.
Numerous phone calls made it clear the error had created varying degrees of grief, inconvenience and consternation for stamp buyers and stamp sellers.
Many of the callers wondered if they’d been overcharged for the top hat stamps, paying 33 cents at their nearby grocery or at postal outlets for what the newspaper reported was a one-cent stamp. Other calls were from stamp sellers, asking that the mistake be corrected because they were getting calls from customers who were questioning whether they had been overcharged or had been given the wrong stamps.
A correction was published on Page One the following day, but even the correction could have used a bit more clarity. It identified only the caption under the picture of the top hat H-stamp as having been incorrect when, in fact, the caption was only repeating the error in the story.
The first question on most readers’ minds was: How much was the top-hat stamp really worth — what they were being charged or what they were reading? That was easy.
But when errors like that occur, there’s always a second question on readers minds, one that’s not always as easily answered: “How can you make a mistake like that?” The newspaper’s editors ask themselves the same question after every error in their odyssey to publish the elusive perfect paper.
It was obvious from readers’ calls to the newspaper that the stamp-price error had struck a nerve, as it also had with Executive Editor Joe Weiler.
“Our readers must be able to trust that the information they get from The News-Sentinel is accurate,” Weiler said. “That is crucial to our continuing success as a newspaper. While no one will ever be successful at printing a completely error-free newspaper, I pledge that this newspaper will always do its best to be accurate and to be honest enough to admit when it is not.”
After talking with the story’s reporter, the postal employee providing the information and various editors involved, here’s how a story about an “H Series” of stamps turned into an “H of an error.”
The postal service has an alphabetized stamp series, beginning with A and ending with the current H series. (I’m inclined to liken it to the weather service’s alphabetical naming of hurricanes.)
There are two H series stamps — one worth 33 cents and one worth a penny. The 33-cent stamp has Uncle Sam’s top hat and carries the lettering USA — followed by a capital H. The one-cent stamp sports a rooster, with lettering that also includes a capital H. It reads: “The ‘H’ Rate make-up stamp.” Neither has a price on it.
Both the reporter and the postal spokesperson acknowledge that, somewhere, their H’s got crossed. When the reporter was asking questions in reference to the H stamp with the 33-cent value, the postal employee’s answer pertained to the H stamp with the one-cent value. Or vice versa.
It may take a serious stamp collector to fully understand the alphabetized stamp system, but in a story like that, it’s the newspaper’s responsibility to sort it out clearly so everyone understands. While there was an attempt to do that, that “clearly” didn’t happen.
