“I feel sick. I feel bad. I feel irritated. I feel aghast,” wrote Bob Slakey, “but I don’t feel badly because I can’t. There is no such word as badly.” Slakey and a score of other Bee readers pointed out a weird headline in the Metro Section last weekend that used the words “badly ill.” Technically, my Webster’s dictionary says “badly” can be used as an informal adverb, whatever that is, but no one at The Bee recommends it, and certainly not in the way it appeared in The Bee headline.
“Badly” was a mistake, an embarrassing one, made by the last person to rework the headline before it went to the press, and it wasn’t spotted in time to make a correction. The chief of the copy desks, Steve Blust, was aware of the mistake the next day, long before most readers noticed. He tracked it down and talked with the people involved, trying to make sure that doesn’t happen again.
Then, another dozen or so readers pointed out that a separate story in the Scene section transformed an executor of a will into an executioner. Most (not all) readers avoided making lawyer jokes, and went to their dictionaries, checked both words and concluded The Bee editors were wrong to let “co-executioner” pass.
Reader Karen Rollston hoped editors were not buried in complaints, but added with tongue firmly in cheek, “I hope you have an executor rather than an executioner.” Assistant Managing Editor Pam Dinsmore reported later that most of the readers she heard from kept their sense of humor, recognizing a human mistake when they saw it, and understood that The Bee editors felt bad about it.
Not a good day
“Plain and simple,” she said, “we really blew it.” Four different Bee journalists — a writer and three editors — handled the story and none spotted the problem. Unfortunately, the computer spell-checker thought it was just fine.
“None of our checks and balances worked,” Dinsmore said. “It’s the first time in a long time that something like that has happened.” Readers often ask why proofreaders don’t catch these mistakes. The role of proofreader changed in newspapers 30 years ago when the printing technology adopted computers. Proofreaders were once responsible for catching and correcting typographical errors introduced by the typesetters in the printing plant. Editing copy and headlines, even in the good old days, was always the responsibility of editors in the newsroom.
Once in a while a proofreader would catch some truly bad factual or grammatical mistake and flag the newsroom to clean up its act. But at most large newspapers that sort of help depended upon the mood in the back shop, the status of union negotiations at the moment and the individuals involved. In many print shops editors were not allowed to touch the type, and printers were not allowed to change copy. (I come from a family full of journeyman printers and they tended to be well-educated, smart, stubborn and very aware of where the lines of responsibility were drawn.)
The high-tech approach
Now, in this high-tech era, computers work from the original keystrokes of reporters and wire services (delivered by computer), and typesetting and proofreading jobs have been essentially eliminated for all news content.
One popular view is that editors have even more control of what goes into the paper than before. Another is that it saves money. Both theories are subject to debate and skepticism at newspapers.
Under normal working conditions at papers such as The Bee, a typical story will be written by a qualified journalist who is responsible for the spelling, grammar and content, then passed through a series of editors for checking. Usually a departmental editor would read the story for clarity and appropriate length, double-check everything else and then pass the story along to the copy desk where two more editors would check the story and write and check the headline.
Once the story is in type, all done by computer these days, a page proof is often checked to make sure everything is correct, if there is enough time available.
Once the presses start running, the initial copies of the paper are checked by pressmen and the last editor in the newsroom, all trying to guard against errors reaching the readers’ doorsteps.
All of these people are educated, trained and strive to get things right — not wrong.
And any of these people, at some point, can make mistakes.
The reasons for mistakes are many, but as my Army sergeant used to yell at me in somewhat more colorful language, if you have to explain what went wrong, somebody messed up.
The goal is to get it right, not explain what went wrong.
How they voted
David Stubbins of Davis asked if The Bee would be interested in printing a once-a-week chart showing how members of Congress vote on key issues.
The Bee editors had anticipated the question, encouraged by other readers in the past.
Since the redesign of the newspaper made its debut in April, The Bee’s graphics department has been providing that information almost every week in the main news section on Sundays. For a comparison, in 2000 The Bee provided the voting records only twice all year. So far this year, beginning in April, the voting tallies have appeared 15 times.
Tracking the votes of elected officials is a valued public service that The Bee should continue to provide when Congress comes back from the current summer recess.
