Two recent columns by newspaper ombudsmen caught my eye. Kathy English, public editor of the Toronto Star, wrote her latest column about the paper’s policy regarding the “unpublishing” of articles. An excerpt:
… Generally, the Star believes that unpublishing is a serious act as it erases the online history of the Star’s journalism. The Star’s policy on this states that while we indeed take seriously concerns of inaccuracy and will correct articles online, just as we do in the newspaper, we do not unpublish articles from our websites. This policy here is similar to that of other major newspapers, including the Washington Post, The New York Times and the Guardian.
If the Star ascertains that a mistake has been published, we correct it. Online, that means editing the text and also appending notes to the articles to tell readers that a correction has been made.
“Just as in print, the Star stands behind what it publishes online. Our purpose is to disclose information, not to hide information because it makes someone unhappy,” says Neil Sanderson, the Star’s assistant managing editor, digital. “If things started disappearing from our websites, readers might suspect that we were trying to conceal an error.
“As well, the stories that we publish are part of the historical record of our city, our province and our country,” he said. “To remove these stories from our archive would leave holes in our history.”
Derek Donovan, readers’ representative at the Kansas City Star, dedicated his end of year column to thanking readers for helping the paper correct errors. Excerpt:
One of my most important jobs at The Kansas City Star is tracking the corrections that run on Page A-2, and I was recently reminded how vital a role readers play in that process …
While appending a correction last Friday, I remembered vividly the caller who’d pointed out the mistake — dollar amounts for police badges that didn’t make sense as written. I then flipped through the previous month’s corrections tally and realized just how many of them came directly from readers, many of whom had no personal interest other than a desire to see The Star set the record straight …
The great collective wisdom of readers comes from the thousands of specialists who follow the news related to their specific areas of interest. I know I can always rely on military buffs to pick apart inaccurate descriptions of the patches on soldiers’ uniforms, or proud moms and dads who let me know when a school has sent in an incomplete team roster or honor roll. No mistake is truly trivial.
So I offer a sincere thanks to you, the readers. You’re directly responsible for alerting me to a huge percentage of those errors that result in corrections (435 so far this year). The Star is obviously far from perfect, but your attention to detail makes it better.
