I recently blogged some proofreading tips from the New York Times, and now the paper is back with some new advice. This time the topic is misspelled names, which has long been a problem for the paper. Here are the latest stats on the Times and its name issue: My colleague Greg Brock reports that [...]
I’m at the Online News Association Conference in Boston today. At 2:15 p.m. the Huffington Post’s Mandy Jenkins and I will lead a workshop, B.S. Detection for Online Journalists. Here’s the overview of what we’ll be covering: Accuracy is fundamental to what we do, but it’s a challenge to verify information when it flows at [...]
The buzzwords for social media editors at news outlets are conversation, curation and collaboration. But when using Twitter and its ilk to collect and disseminate news in real-time, another word is becoming just as important: corroboration. During big, breaking events such as Hurricane Irene, the East Coast earthquake and uprisings in the Middle East, social [...]
Asking your users to report inaccuracies strikes me as a fabulous idea, and likely very productive see: “someone is wrong on the internet!“ I have no knowledge of the quantity of errors submitted using these forms, or how the corrections process works. My suspicion is that each submitted correction sends an email to some hapless [...]
I recently made an offer to my fellow journalists: if you create a personal accuracy checklist, I'll send you a free copy of my book. Checklists are the best tool for preventing factual errors. I want more of us in the press to use them, so I'm putting my money where my mouth is. You [...]
I recently made an offer to my fellow journalists: if you create a personal accuracy checklist, I'll send you a free copy of my book. Checklists are the best tool for preventing factual errors. I want more of us in the press to use them, so I'm putting my money where my mouth is. You [...]
I recently made an offer to my fellow journalists: if you create a personal accuracy checklist, I'll send you a free copy of my book. Checklists are the best tool for preventing factual errors. I want more of us in the press to use them, so I'm putting my money where my mouth is. You [...]
I recently made an offer to my fellow journalists: if you create a personal accuracy checklist, I'll send you a free copy of my book. Checklists are the best tool for preventing factual errors. I want more of us in the press to use them, so I'm putting my money where my mouth is. You [...]
I owe Steve Buttry a big favor. In October I went to Washington to attend the Online News Association's conference. Buttry, who is the director of community engagement at TBD, invited me to give a presentation about errors and accuracy at American University. This was part of TBD and AU's series of blogging workshops. You [...]
I forgot to add a link to my Columbia Journalism Review column from last week, which provides journalists with a wealth of advice and resources for online verification. An excerpt: Content Analysis Author – Is someone identified as the author of the site or article? Google them, look for a personal website. If their byline [...]
Like people who can’t help asking for health advice from any doctor they meet, journalists who recognize me as the Regret the Error guy usually have two questions on their mind. I view these queries as a reward for spending six years researching, tracking and reporting on press errors and accuracy. First, they want to [...]
Matt Thompson, a fellow the Reynolds Journalism Institute at the University of Missouri, wrote an interesting post about corrections for his Newsless blog. He notes the limitations of the online corrections pages of some newspaper websites, and also calls for a new way of pushing corrections out to readers: We could do much more with [...]
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 [...]
This week marks the release of the US paperback edition of the Regret the Error book. Order your copy here. In addition to a lower price, the paperback includes a new introduction by me and the best corrections and apologies of 2007-08. We also corrected the errors identified in the hardcover. (Read and subscribe to [...]
The New York Times’ Career Couch feature recently offered advice for dealing with workplace mistakes. A lot of the insights can also be applied to journalistic errors. Here are some relevant excerpts: One key to handling errors effectively is to recognize they aren’t necessarily a reflection of your native abilities and intelligence, [Carol Tavris, a [...]
