Dan Sadowskys name appeared in The Oregonian once last year.
But it was spelled wrong.
It did do something to my confidence in reading The Oregonian. How hard are the reporters willing to work to get the story right? says Sadowsky, a North Portland restaurant owner. Seeing your name misspelled brings that point home, that you think there are other things in the newspaper that might be wrong.
Thats why errors are so damaging for a newspaper and why good journalists ache when they make them. Yet an annual review of The Oregonians corrections for readers and the staff shows that misspelling names continues to be a problem for the newspaper.
Journalists are human and will make mistakes because they juggle thousands of facts on deadline. But the analysis of the corrections shows that many of the errors are simple and preventable all while carrying a large consequence of eroding trust in the newspaper. And those errors add up.
Last year, we published 824 corrections. The overall number was up from 679 corrections the year before, 718 in 2001 and 770 in 2000. In some ways, the increase in the overall number isnt necessarily bad news because the newspaper should be aggressive about correcting mistakes. Frankly, I applaud staff members for admitting errors so they can be fixed; staffers spotted almost one-fourth of the 2003 errors.
Many newspapers saw increases in corrections, and several factors may have caused that: greater diligence by staff and readers to report errors in light of the Jayson Blair case at The New York Times; and more news in The Oregonian because of expanded zoned and sports sections.
What are most frustrating are the recurring errors involving the basics of what we do. Of last years errors, at least 127 involved the misspelling of names. Similarly, The Oregonian misspelled or misstated 106 proper nouns, such as names of organizations and agencies.
In addition to stumbling on the basic question of who, we let down readers in two other Ws of journalism: when and where. The newspaper corrected the location of an event or development at least 40 times and misstated a time or date at least 93 times, including one mistake by me in a different editing role that likely inconvenienced thousands of readers wanting to see Rose Festival fireworks.
The newspaper has taken steps to try to prevent those misspellings and basic fact errors. Many reporters, even longtime veterans, keep improving their fact-checking practices. The newspaper has refined its double-check process, what we refer to as CQing. But those steps are not always followed religiously the copy editors of our features sections caught 408 errors before publication that they had been told had been double-checked.
Mistakes still will slip through even with the best of practices and intentions. A reporter recently relied on a business card to make sure of a spelling but the source had intentionally misspelled his name to make it easier to pronounce.
Mother Sonya Neal was understanding when her daughter Kashay Moore of Jefferson High School was in the newspaper for the first time last year and her name was misspelled. I know everything cant be perfect, she says. Mistakes do happen.
But what happens after the mistake is critical. When Gaston teacher Viki Mulicks name appeared in The Oregonian last year, it was spelled incorrectly. Yet Mulick did appreciate that the newspaper quickly corrected the mistake and the reporter called to apologize.
Reader research and experience show that while errors will hurt credibility, correcting the mistakes can help restore it. Knowing that The Oregonian corrected the misspelling of his name made Sadowsky feel better about the newspaper. And hes kept reading, although perhaps a bit more warily.
Thats a really small error in the overall picture of reporting, he says, so to know that (correction) got in gives me some confidence in the newspaper and that it cares about even the smallest details.
