Regret the Error: The Book (and a request)
I’m very pleased to announce that a book entitled Regret the Error will be on shelves in the US, Canada, UK and Australia this fall. The Canadian rights were purchased by Penguin Canada, and other English rights have gone to Union Square Press in New York. I have been working on this project for roughly two years now. Here’s the announcement from today’s Publisher’s Lunch email:
NON-FICTION: HISTORY/POLITICS/CURRENT AFFAIRS
Journalist and originator of the website RegretTheError.com Craig Silverman’s REGRET THE ERROR: How Media Mistakes Pollute and Endanger the Press, an Eats, Shoots and Leaves for the media-centric, with a foreword by blogger Jeff Jarvis, listing hundreds of humorous and shocking media errors, analyzing the history of media mistakes, and examining why today’s media climate makes it imperative that the press meet higher standards of accuracy, to Philip Turner at Union Square Press, for publication in fall 2007, by Don Sedgwick of the Transatlantic Literary Agency (world English excluding Canada).
The book will also look at the death of newspaper proofreaders, the emergence and decline of magazine fact checking, and will offer suggestions for how the press can meet a higher standard of accuracy. All this to say that if you enjoy the site, I hope you’ll consider checking out the book. Even more importantly, I’m asking for your participation and contributions.
As indicated above, one of the chapters will look at ways the press can increase its level of accuracy. I have spent a lot of time researching current methods in use within newsrooms, along with other inventive strategies I plan to introduce. But there is no way I can come up with all of the best recommendations on my own.
So: I’m asking all of you who work in newsrooms that have instituted novel ways of preventing, correcting or tracking errors to please write in and share your story. For those of you not in the profession, I’d still love to hear your ideas. I will of course offer you full credit for the idea and will collect the submissions for public viewing on this site. (I’ll honor requests to keep your name private.)
For those familiar with the term, this is very much meant to be an experiment in crowdsourcing. Basically: you know more than I do. I’m hoping you’ll take a few minutes to share your knowledge and help create a definitive collection of error prevention, correction and tracking strategies.
Start by sending me an email with your example or idea (subject: "accuracy idea"). Then come back and you’ll soon see the submissions listed on a page linked from the home page of this site. To get things started, here are a few examples of what I’m talking about:
- Magazine-style fact checking
- Accuracy checklists created to help reporters review their work before submitting it to an editor
- Post-article surveys sent out to sources to gather feedback on the accuracy of the article as published
- Databases that collect and categorize every correction run by a publication
- etc.
If you’ve created a twist on one of these established tools/strategies, I’d love to hear about it. If you have a completely new idea, I’m equally interested. Let’s see what we can come up with.
–Craig Silverman
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