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In November of last year, I was invited to the Toronto Star by Kathy English, the paper’s public editor, to give a presentation to newsroom staff. The Star is Canada’s highest circulation daily, and one of very few* media outlets in the country with a full-time public editor/ombudsman.
Prior to my presentation, we sat down for an interview during which English told me that the paper was embarking on several accuracy-related projects. One was to build a corrections database to track the paper’s errors; another was to update the paper’s corrections style.
English was nice enough to write a column about my presentation and book. Now it’s my turn to interview her. We spoke via email about the Star’s new corrections style, how the paper encourages readers to report errors, and whether the phrase “regret the error” is a useful addition to a correction.
*Editor’s Note: An unfinished version of this post was mistakenly published on Wednesday morning. As a result, the sentence “The Star is Canada’s highest circulation daily, and one of very few media outlets in the country that has a full-time public editor/ombudsman” left out the word “few.” Thanks to David and Steve for spotting that mistake. Update: I’ve also fixed a few typos that didn’t cause any factual errors, including a misspelling of the word “interview” in the headline (forgot the “r”). Thanks to Eric and Aldous. On with the Q&A…
Who decided that the paper’s corrections style needed to be updated?
When I took on the role of public editor at the Star last May, I initiated a review of the paper’s corrections policy and practices. This was approved by my boss, publisher, Jagoda Pike, with the full co-operation of editor-in-chief Fred Kuntz. That’s not to suggest that the paper did not have vigorous corrections policies and practices in place. My predecessor, Sharon Burnside, did an excellent job of keeping the Star accountable to its readers through corrections and the Star has long had an accuracy and corrections policy.
I came to the Star from the Globe and Mail where I had served on an “integrity committee” that had looked at the paper’s corrections policies and I had put a lot of work into researching best practices in newspaper corrections. It seemed appropriate to bring what I had learned to my new challenge at the Star.
As well, the goal of the public editor bringing more accountability to the Star’s corrections process through a tracking system that would help the newsroom learn from published errors was very clearly part of the mandate I took on with this role. I am happy to say I report to a publisher who has strong views on this newspaper’s responsibility for accuracy and the need for accountability for accuracy. I could hardly launch a system for tracking errors without fully understanding and reviewing the Star’s Accuracy and Corrections policy.
What caused the change?
We haven’t significantly changed the way corrections are written, beyond deciding not to print “the Star regrets the error” in all corrections and trying to be consistent about what should be included in corrections.
The most significant change is the presentation. Corrections are now published under a “Corrections” label, rather than with individual headlines. Our policy calls for all news corrections to run in a prominent position on Page A2 (or 3) and corrections for Sports, Business, Living and Entertainment to run in the same location in those sections. This is not a change from longstanding practice at the Star.
When you sat down to think about the new style, what were the main things you wanted to achieve?
The most important goal of our corrections is to serve the reader — and the record — by stating the correct information so that readers clearly know what is accurate. Corrections should be clear, concise and direct and indicate to readers what we got wrong. Our style aims to first state the correct fact and then to provide the broad context of what was wrong without necessarily repeating the error. We don’t follow the correct information with the general statement of “incorrect information was published” because we think we should inform readers about what went wrong. They should not have to guess at what we are correcting.
Corrections must also include the calendar date the original article was published (not the day of the week because that becomes meaningless online) and the brief context of that article.
As well, corrections had traditionally referred to an error in a “story” and I changed that to “article”. I think article is a better word for newspaper readers because “story” could create (unconscious) connotations of fiction. To me, article more clearly denotes fact, which is what we provide to readers.
We also had much debate about whether to ascribe blame in published corrections by denoting whether the mistake was “due to an editing error.” (Or, “due to a reporting error.”) The policy here has long been that publishing the Star is a team endeavor and we do not publicly ascribe blame for errors. We have not changed that. However, our new Accuracy Tracker system will help us to learn much more internally about the cause of errors.
What was the process for creating the new style?
The review of the Star’s accuracy and corrections policy was part of an overall Star “Credibility Committee” that is currently revising and updating the Star’s Policy and Ethics manual to ascertain that newsroom policies reflect the realities of 21st century/multimedia journalism. I headed the accuracy and corrections committee of nine editors and reporters. This committee looked at all aspects of the Star’s corrections policy and practices, in the light of what is considered best practice in North American newsrooms. We looked at online corrections, what we correct and the wording and placement of corrections. I then drafted an updated policy, which was approved by the Credibility Committee (co-chaired by me and the editor-in-chief). It will be published in a new manual in coming months.
This process took place over several months and throughout, I tried to provide information to the newsroom about best practices in corrections by posting a number of research articles on the newsroom intranet. Inviting you to the Star to speak about accuracy and corrections was also part of my initiative to try to spark more discussion about this important topic.
Some of the new corrections repeat the incorrect information (“A recipe for Bourbon Apple Cake misstated the amount of butter that should be used in Step 2. It is one and a half sticks, not cups…”) while others don’t (“The potential savings from driving a highly fuel efficient hybrid car (after 96,000 kms and if fuel reached European-like gas prices of $2 a litre) would be approximately $900. An incorrect savings estimate was published…”). How do you choose when to include the incorrect information?
You are right. While our goal is consistency and my preferred corrections style is to state the correct information first, sometimes that simply does not best serve the reader and it makes more sense to start out by stating what was wrong (the New York Times style) and then provide the correct information. We do this sparingly and only after determining that our standard style doesn’t work best. I do believe that stating the correct information is the most important goal of a correction and it should be the “lead”, but I reserve the right to alter that if it doesn’t clearly communicate to readers. Consistency is important but sometimes the “formula” doesn’t work.
It appears as though the new corrections have ditched the phrase “The Star regret the error.” Why was that no longer needed?
Our committee gave serious consideration to dropping this sentence that has long been included at the end of all corrections in the Star. I like the polite civility of it, but there was general agreement that this phrase has come to sound somewhat satirical (please don’t take this wrong, but I wonder if that is a result of your website making the phrase “Regret the Error” sound somewhat insincere when it appears in print in the daily newspaper.) I also looked at the style of other newspapers and “Regret the Error” is not generally used these days.
I don’t think that sentence was particularly meaningful or significant to readers. I also think it’s a given that the Star regrets all of our errors; the fact that we are addressing them in a published correction is evident of that and so too is our move to track errors to try to learn from, and minimize them. That’s not to say there won’t be occasions when we do explicitly express our regret.
Have you received any reader feedback about the new corrections style?
None whatsoever.
Do more readers read the printed corrections than those published online, or vice versa?
I expect more readers read the corrections published in the newspaper.
What kind of traffic does your online corrections page get?
I spoke to our web editor and she tells me the traffic to that page is almost nil.
Apart from the writing of the corrections, have any other things changed, such as placement etc.?
The most significant change for the reader is that we no longer run headlines with corrections. The headlines took up a lot of space and essentially could not say much but repeat the content of the correction. I looked at corrections in numerous other papers and saw that most run corrections under a “Corrections” label, without individual headlines and it made sense to do the same here.
We’ve also started publishing information on the Page 2 Index to indicate the Star’s commitment to accuracy and tell readers how to report a possible error. This is in addition to the online initiatives to guide readers to how to report possible errors.
The most significant change for Star journalists is that we now monitor corrections in the Toronto Star Accuracy Tracker, an online form that helps the Star track and monitor corrections and reasons for errors. The purpose is to help the newspaper learn from mistakes so that we can continually strive for higher levels of editorial excellence. It requires that department heads, in consultation with staff, provide the required information about the reason and origin of errors to the public editor’s office following publication of a correction. Here’s a link to the public editor column I wrote about this.
There is a little link next to every online story that allows people to “Report typo or correction.” How long has this been in place, and where do those emails go? How often do readers use it?
I believe this was put in place by my predecessor, Sharon Burnside, working with our online team. All of these emails go directly to the public editor’s mailbox which is monitored by my office (myself and Public Editor Associate, Joan Vander Doelen) from 9 a.m. to about 6 p.m. Monday to Friday. We don’t routinely monitor during nights and weekends, but I usually take a look each night and on Saturday and Sunday to determine if there is any major issue in need of correction.
Readers use this throughout the day — it varies from day to day of course, but on average, we probably receive about 30-40 emails daily through this link. The issues can be relatively minor, such as typos in articles that have been just posted to thestar.com, or can be significant requests for correction to articles that were published in the newspaper and online and that require significant amounts of time and effort to verify. We investigate all of these reader emails and take appropriate action to correct when necessary and make sure the correction is followed through online, in print and in the Star’s archives.
Any more corrections-related changes planned for the future?
The next step of this process is to overhaul our online Corrections page and to link all online corrections to the online articles they correct. Our online corrections policy calls for this and other measures to create more transparency about corrections and changes to online articles. We still have much work ahead to create a consistent correction environment in the newspaper and online, but we do have a clear sense of direction on this.
I’m also looking forward to what we learn from our Accuracy Tracker about why some errors occur and what systemic problems might be responsible for these. Our goal is to be a leader in newspaper accuracy and corrections practices and I’ll be continuing to research best practices throughout the industry to determine how we can improve the accuracy and accountability of Canada’s largest newspaper. Our readers deserve nothing less.
Has your organization recently changed its corrections policy, or enacted a new accuracy-related program? Email me so we can do an interview.
