Regret the Error

Few things in the world of magazines are the subject of as much lore as the New Yorker’s fact checking department.

Many marvel over the magazine’s pedantic process for checking the facts in every article, caption, cartoon, poem and work of fiction. I dedicated a chapter of my book to fact checking, and recounted many of the amusing and apocryphal tales of checkers going far beyond the call of duty. For my research, I interviewed two fact checkers from the New Yorker, though only one spoke on the record. I had also approached Peter Canby, the head of the department and a senior editor at the magazine, for an interview. He politely declined.

Fortunately, we both delivered speeches at a recent fact checking conference in Germany, and I had the chance to speak with him. I also shot video of some of Canby’s interesting and amusing keynote speech. He began his talk by stating that it would be off the record, but I managed to get him to allow me to post a few excerpts. Three clips are below.

This one explains how they hire checkers, and the skills they look for:

Here’s some insight into what the magazine expects from its writers when it comes to fact checking:

Canby describes what he sees as the ultimate value of fact checking:

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