There is one last bit of accounting for 2002 for me. That’s examining the corrections that ran in the Free Press, and what we learned from our mistakes.
The newspaper ran fewer corrections in 2002 than the year before, 415 to 451 in 2001. That’s a decrease of 8 percent, a feat that shows reporters, editors, photographers and others are making an effort to be more careful in their work.
Those 36 fewer errors came during a time when the newsroom had more work to do. In 2002, the Free Press launched several new sections, including the all-about-hockey Puck on Thursdays, and experimented with the Weekend Planners that were published for three months.
It seems, too, that some solutions we have put in place, such as accuracy checklists for journalists, have helped keep those concerns on people’s minds.
Certain error patterns didn’t change from 2001 to 2002. In both years incorrect facts and numbers, misidentifications and misspellings accounted for 75 percent of the corrections.
We can discern some trends from the explanation forms that staffers give to their editors after committing errors.
No mystery there: We’re human, and prone to errors. A slip of the finger, and you type a “J” instead of an “L.”
And the closer reporters and editors are to a deadline, the more prone they are to mistakes.
Other patterns:
- About 60 percent of the errors we corrected were by reporters, with others committed by editors, designers, artists and photographers.
- Source errors — incorrect information, like the wrong price for a product given to a reporter by the manufacturer — are responsible for about 10 percent.
- Half the errors that involved misidentifying someone were committed in photo captions.
- We did not have to correct a single quote all year.
In 1990, the Free Press ran 821 corrections, 741 of those published on Page 2A, and 80 running elsewhere.
Misidentification of people we wrote about or depicted was the most common error.
In 1991, Charlotte Craig, the reader representative at the time, advised that staffers double-check everything, have reference materials close at hand and reread material after deadline. Still good advice today.
The discipline of verifying is crucial. Verification helps distinguish journalism from propaganda, fiction and infotainment.
