The Torontoist blog, which has a neat system for correcting posts, spotted an unfortunate error in a story published by the free Metro commuter paper in Toronto: The error comes after the paper laid off staff earlier in the week, a decision that resulted in a correction in the Globe And Mail. Thanks, Brendan! Report [...]
An editorial in yesterday’s Gazette incorrectly reported that Jean Lapierre, former president of the union representing the city’s blue-collar workers, is dead. We are pleased to report that Mr. Lapierre is in fact alive. We sincerely regret the error and apologize to Mr. Lapierre. Link From the editorial in question, which remains uncorrected online: … [...]
An article published on the New York Daily News’ website stole two paragraphs and two quotes from a story published on the front page of the San Antonio Express-News. Bob Richter, the Express-News public editor, described the theft on his blog: An editor at nydailynews.com, the Web site of the New York Daily News, acknowledged [...]
Metro newspaper in Toronto is not replacing laid-off writers with interns. The newspaper’s internship program was not altered as a result of recent layoffs in the editorial department. A column published yesterday may have suggested otherwise. Link The column item in question: A Toronto free daily newspaper has laid off all of its staff writers [...]
Correction: Because of a reporting error, the gender of Michael and Orla Murphy-LaScola’s baby was misidentified in yesterday’s Names column. Roan Tamas LaScola is a girl. Link Report an error
This was published on the National Post’s NP Editors blog this evening: Today, a Financial Post reporter responded unprofessionally to another Twitter user on his personal Twitter account. While the remarks were made on the reporter’s personal Twitter account, the conversation first began when the reporter was acting in his capacity as a reporter for [...]
In an unusual and laudable decision, the Hamilton Spectator (Ontario) chose to reprint a two-page spread after the first version contained errors. Here’s the correction/letter from the paper’s sports editor: Dear Readers: Today’s featured centrespread (pages 8-9) is a reproduction of our centrespread from last Tuesday. It features photos of Hamilton and Halton high school [...]
Zap2it.com: A headline and article in Business on Friday said the online television and movie listings service Zap2it.com was being merged into the Los Angeles Times. More precisely, the listings service and the news organization, both owned by Tribune Co., will share staff in a newly formed Los Angeles-based online entertainment news bureau created to [...]
Because of editing errors, a video games column on Saturday about a legal dispute between Blizzard Entertainment, the creator of the World of Warcraft game, and the makers of a “bot†program called Glider that plays the game automatically, gave an incomplete quotation from a lawyer representing Glider’s creator, Michael Donnelly, and misattributed a statement [...]
A photo Sunday was misidentified as that of Barbra Streisand and Robert Redford. The photo was of Meryl Streep and Redford in “Out of Africa.” Link Idol impostor: Those old enough to know were quick to let us know we should have known better than to mix up Janet and Vivien Leigh in a photo [...]
We Goofy-ed. A story and photo caption in Monday’s paper confused two long-eared, beloved Disney cartoon characters. We said Goofy, but we meant Pluto. Report an error
This a bit meta. Giles Hattersley wrote an article for the Sunday Times (London) that reported Wikipedia’s Jimmy Wales would soon make “a controversial proposal to ensure that changes to the most popular wiki-pages are vetted before they go live.” The goal of the proposal was to help reduce factual errors and vandalism on the [...]
The provincial capital of Newfoundland was described as “St John” in our travel special section on Bonavista, Newfoundland (Observer Magazine, last week) but it is actually St John’s. St John is in New Brunswick, 657 miles to the south west. Be careful if you are booking flights to one of these towns. Link Report an [...]
Because of an editing error, an article on Jan. 25 about the forthcoming film adaptation of “Sherlock Holmes†misidentified the character that Susan Downey, a producer on the film and the wife of its star, Robert Downey Jr., described as “a bit of a ladies man, a bit of a brawler†and as having “a [...]
We apologise to Elizabeth Stevenson, who is a partner of W Stevenson & Sons, and would like to clarify that she has not personally been tried or convicted of any criminal offence and is not therefore being sentenced in connection with that firm’s involvement in the black fish scam (Judge orders skippers to pay £200,000 [...]
A Queens hairstylist is suing the New York Daily News after the paper twice identified her as the woman accused of helping run a prostitution service allegedly patronized by former New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer. In two stories from last week, the paper published a photo of Bojana Vuleta and identified her as Kristin Davis, [...]
After releasing my free Regret the Error Accuracy Checklist earlier this week (download your copy here), I devoted my latest CJR online column to the subject of checklists. This column offers background on why checklists have proven useful in so many different industries and professions. I examine why they work for journalists, and why we [...]
Due to an editing error, our article on Cambodia last week incorrectly suggested that 4,500 residents near Boeung Kak lake in Phnom Penh had been evicted. This has not happened yet. Our apologies. Link Report an error
Vice-regal vicissitude: Last June we showed a lack of excellence by changing Australia’s first female Governor-General Quentin Bryceinto a man, calling her Mr Bryce. Now we’ve also managed to change the sex of Canada’s Governor-General, Michaelle Jean. Her Excellency Mme Jean is a she, not a he as we published in late editions of the [...]
A story in Sunday’s Miami Herald incorrectly stated that Broward Mayor Stacy Ritter voted to shift millions of dollars in insurance risk from the owners of the Florida Panthers to the public at a time her husband lobbied for a Panthers-affiliated company. Ritter was not at the meeting when the measure passed. We regret the [...]
New York Times executive editor Bill Keller participated in an online Q&A with the public this week. Some of his answers touched on accuracy, credibility and corrections. Here’s one relevant exchange: Q. You’ve been the face of The Times through the very roughest times for The Times. Anything you regret? — C.D. Monroe, Washington … [...]
A letter published in the British Medical Journal: Perhaps after 34 years it’s time for us to confess that we invented cello scrotum. Reading Curtis’s 1974 letter to the BMJ on guitar nipple, we thought it highly likely to be a spoof and decided to go one further by submitting a letter pretending to have [...]
In an article headlined The playboy prince is on the loose (30 January, page 3, G2) we said it had been reported on the gossip pages that Prince Azim of Brunei threw a party for the Pussycat Dolls at the Mahiki nightclub in London. The office of the Sultan of Brunei has asked us to [...]
In last week’s column about photographing snowflakes, I said I was delighted to learn about the delightful word “groppel,” meaning little globs of ice that form on snowflakes. A couple of readers promptly noted that the word might have seemed novel to me because it’s actually “graupel,” a German term transported into English. As an [...]
An Op-Ed article on Wednesday, about the Heimlich maneuver, incorrectly described the technique. The person administering the maneuver pushes under the choking victim’s diaphragm, not above it. The article also misidentified the part of the body food travels through to the stomach. It is the esophagus, not the trachea. Link Thanks, David! Report an error
