My colleague Greg Brock reports that of about 2,800 errors we’ve corrected in print so far this year, 460 have involved people’s names. And every time we get a name wrong, we chip away at The Times’s credibility in the eyes of readers. It’s embarrassing when we misspell well-known names. Even worse is misspelling the names of ordinary people who may appear in The Times only once. Their moment in the spotlight is spoiled, and they’re likely to tell everyone they know that The Times can’t get its facts straight.

And now for the Times tips:

• In every interview, ask the subject to spell his or her name.
• If you use another source, online or elsewhere, be sure it’s reliable. (Don’t take a Google poll and go with the spelling that gets the most hits.)
• Don’t just check how we spelled the name last time — our archive is, among other things, a minefield of past errors.
• Copy editors should check as many names as humanly possible.
• If you couldn’t double-check before the first deadline, do it afterward.
• Be wary of names with common variants — Stephen and Steven, O’Neil and O’Neill and O’Neal.
• Don’t rely on memory.

Good advice.

Accuracy is fundamental to what we do, but it’s a challenge to verify information when it flows at digital warp speed from so many sources. Get specific tools, advice and strategies to master the art of online verification. Learn how to verify a tweet, evaluate if a website is credible and check the accuracy of your own work.

The good news is that a lot of ONA is live streamed and there will be tons of people tweeting details from the workshops, too. So check today for a live stream, and also be sure to follow #ONA11 and #bsdetection on Twitter.

Even better than all that, I’ve embedded our slides below. We decided to include a lot of our tips and lessons on the slides, so you can learn a lot just by clicking through and reading.

Enjoy!

Update September 26, 2011: I heard from a couple of people that our Additional Reading links on the last slide aren’t clickable. Here they are for you:

• Best practices for social media verification
• Accuracy and accountability checklist for social media
  
• The journalist’s guide to gutless online verification
• The human algorithm
• BBC processes for verifying social media content
• Meet Andy Carvin, verification machine
• The challenge of verifying crowdsourced information
• Resources to help journalists with accuracy and verification

Update Oct. 19, 2011: Here’s the full video of our session:

— via “Social media editor role expands to include fighting misinformation during breaking news“, a great story by Steve Myers at Poynter. I agree this is an increasingly important role and skill set for social media editors. For all journalists, in fact.

–via Measuring and increasing accuracy in journalism, a great post by Jonathan Stray. He provides a good overview of the history of news accuracy studies, and also makes some good suggestions for how to improve measurement. Very worth reading.

John X. Miller is editor of the Hickory Daily Record and previously served as public editor of the Detroit Free Press. In addition to providing several sample checklists, he also offered one of the best testimonials I've seen on behalf of newsroom checklists.

"When I was public editor at the Detroit Free Press from 1999 through 2007, we created and used accuracy checklist extensively, and we had data that demonstrated that they worked in lowering errors, specifically recurring errors, with numbers (like phone numbers), odd names (like the Detroit Chamber, not Detroit Chamber of Commerce), misspellings and misidentifications," he wrote in an email. "We created them for every functional job in the newsroom, and the way we produced them (folding cards to be placed on desks in front of people or perforated to be cut apart), demonstrated how newsroom accuracy is an integrated process that involves acknowledgement of everyone's role in the process"

The Free Press created several checklists, one for each role in the process. I've embedded them below. Along with looking at those examples, I encourage you to read the column Miller wrote about checklists. It's important because he provides hard data about the efficacy of checklists:

In the first six months of 2001, the Free Press averaged 44 corrections each month, with the most errors in June — 53. The monthly average for the last five months, July through November, is 31.

In July, we had 25 corrections, more than a 53-percent decrease from the high number in June. Overall, the July-November number of corrections is 30 percent lower than the first half of the year.

I've had people ask me for data about checklists, so there you go. His column also addressed the limitations of checklists:

One way we check to see whether people use the checklists — and reinforce that they can work if used — is to ask if using them could have kept a mistake from being made in the first place. We ask that question, among others, on correction forms that people who are responsible for the error must fill out.

The one area that hasn’t been helped by checklists is errors in fact that are not categorized as misidentifications, misspellings, addresses and mistakes with numbers. These account generally for 44 percent of all corrections. These are errors such as a headline that disagrees with what’s in a story, or saying anthrax is caused by a virus when it’s caused by bacteria.

The document he sent with the checklists included an interesting preamble, which I've excerpted:

We decided on what errors to target by examining the error pattern over the last couple of years, talking with and getting buy-in from staff and experimenting with the checklists. The goal of these accuracy checklists is to remind newsroom journalists, especially on deadline, to verify and re-verify certain information and to help make sure stories, photos and graphics are contextual and work together.

We designed the checklists to cover the key newsroom roles of reporter, assigning editor, copy editor, photographer, photo editor, page designer and artist. The 8 checklists are written in the active voice and are as concise as possible, and are made into a laminated 2-sided card that can be folded to sit atop a desk or computer, or to be cut apart for lists to be used separately.

As far as the Free Press’ accuracy focus, accuracy and fairness are the top newsroom- wide goals. Being accurate is one of the most important responsibilities of today’s journalists. It’s a core value that is fundamental to all that we do. It affirms a newspaper’s credibility, authority and accuracy. Readers expect journalists to get information right and when we don’t get routine information correct, it has a cumulative negative affect on credibility.

And now for the checklists:

Wendy Stonecash is the Data Center Supervisor/Newsroom Administrator for the Palladium-Item in Richmond, Indiana. She uses the below checklist to make sure all of the important parts of an obituary are taken care of prior to publication. Note how many items are here — and therefore how many things can go wrong.

Wendy's checklist:

Sean F. Driscoll is a reporter with the Rockford Register Star in Rockford, Illinois. He sent me a photo of a checklist that he keeps taped to the side of his computer monitor. "It’s simple, but it’s up right where I can see it, and it hits all the high points of things to check," he said.

Simple is good, Sean!

I love that his checklist includes the commands to "Walk away" and "Print story." Both of those steps are essential for me when I'm in the final stages of self-editing and checking. I encourage all of you to add them to your checklists.

Here's Sean's checklist, and his book is shipping soon:

Heidi Hallett is a writer and editor in my hometown of Halifax, Nova Scotia. (She also used to run Frog Hollow Books, a wonderful local book store that sadly closed down.) Below is the checklist she created "to edit and evaluate new and existing websites for clients. I cobbled it together last year and it has served me very well." So it's not a traditional accuracy checklist, but it helps illustrate how useful and versatile checklists are. Create yours, send it to me and I'll send you a free copy of my book.

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 can check out my slides and Buttry's live blog of my presentation.

At the beginning of the presentation, I promised to introduce the greatest error-prevention tool known to humankind. I'll spare you the suspense: it's a checklist. A simple follow-the-instructions-and-tick-the-boxes checklist. I've written fairly extensively about why checklists are so effective, and I even have my own accuracy checklist available for download. Grab it and read the instructions on the same page. Maybe you can also read this New Yorker article about how amazing checklists are, or pick up The Checklist Manifesto, a book that explains why checklists are so freakin' useful. Checklists!

Okay, sorry. Back to why I owe Buttry a big favor.

During my presentation, I mentioned that I always encourage people to create and share their own accuracy checklists. Mine isn't perfect. Far from it. And people can benefit from creating and updating their own personal accuracy checklist. So I plead with people to create their own checklists and then to send them to me so I can learn from them and share them.

Well, that has pretty much never happened. Until now.

Buttry yesterday published an amazingly valuable post that presents his own checklist, along with a wealth of valuable error prevention information. Let me link to it again to make sure you click on it.

I'm grateful that's he's taken up the checklist challenge. And thanks to him tweeting about it yesterday, I heard from another journalist, Lori Shontz, who said she also uses checklists in her work:

I asked her for her checklists and she sent me a couple of pictures from her BlackBerry. This is a general editorial checklist:

And this is for obits:

Free Stuff!

Here's the part where you come in. I want to make 2011 the year checklists finally make inroads into newsrooms. I need your help — and I'm willing to reward you for your time and effort. Please take time to review my checklist and the one from Buttry. Then create your own, scan/photograph it, and email it to me. I'll share it here on the site and I'll send you a free copy of my book.

Let me be clear about this: I don't have a garage full of books. (Hell, I don't even have a garage.) I'm going to order each one from Amazon. Remember Shontz? I'm shipping her a book this week. Yes, I'm crazy for checklists!

But wait, there's more!

If you manage a newsroom or a team of journalists, get your team to collaborate on a checklist and then send me a photo of all of you with the checklist. In return, I'll do a free workshop for you via Skype. We'll make sure the entire team knows how to use a checklist and I'll share lots of other tips about avoiding and correcting errors.

That's my offer. Why am I buying books for people? The reason is straightforward: if you use a checklist on a regular basis, you will make fewer mistakes. They work. The fact that we don't use them is frustrating and stupid — especially in resource-strapped newsrooms that are trying to do more with less.

Now start creating those checklists.

Content Analysis

Author – Is someone identified as the author of the site or article? Google them, look for a personal website. If their byline links to an archive of previous work, read through it to see if they cover the topic regularly. If they’re an academic, Howard Rheingold has a tip to check their credibility: “use the scholarly productivity index that derives a score from the scholar’s publications, citations by other scholars, grants, honors, and awards. If you want to get even more serious, download a free copy of Publish or Perish software, which analyzes scientific citations from Google Scholar according to multiple criteria. Again, don’t trust just one source. Triangulate.”

Content – Is the article citing facts and are they accurate? Or do you read it and realize there isn’t fact, statistic, quote or citation mentioned. Does it rely on generalized personal narratives that lack specificity?

Copy – Rosenberg advocates checking to see if the content is original. “Grab a chunk of text (a sentence or so), put it in quotes, and plug it into Google to see whether there are multiple versions of the text you’re reading.”

Links – Does it link out to reputable sources? Is it littered with keyword ads, or have no links at all? Also, critically, see who is linking to the site or page in question. Here’s what Rosenberg wrote about this: “If your hunt for links in turns up a ton of references from dubious sites, your article may be part of a Google-gaming effort. If you see lots of inbound links from sites that seem reputable to you, that’s a better sign. “

Comments/Tweets/Likes – Are people interacting with the content? Be sure to check if all of the comments are spam, and also to see if tweets come from active users rather than bots. Finally is anyone Like-ing the content or the site in general? One easy way to look for social media chatter for a given link is to install the ConvoTrack bookmarklet. Run it while on the site in question and it will show if people have shared the link on Twitter, FriendFeed, Digg, Reddit, HackerNews and some of the major blogging platforms.

Today's column looks at the aftermath of the Slate/Politico showdown from earlier in the summer, and how that caused Slate to change its correction policy. An excerpt:

When we spoke this week, [Slate editor David] Plotz called the dustup with Politico “embarrassing” and said it happened “because of a mistake by me, which was not to really realize and then not to notice or call attention to the fact that we were tweaking them for things we were doing ourselves.”

After the incident, Plotz decided the Slate organization needed to reexamine the “twenty-four hour window” rule that saw it scrubbing errors out of articles. He convened an e-mail discussion between the site’s top editors and initially suggested they shorten the window.

“We went back and forth on shortening the window and actually it was Jack [Shafer, the site’s editor at large and Press Box columnist] who weighed in and said, ‘Look this just doesn’t make any sense. The window is the problem and we have to be really transparent about this …’,” Plotz said.

The group quickly realized Shafer was right. At this point, I’ll disclose that Shafer and I spoke earlier this month in order to discuss Slate’s corrections policy and the issue of the window. I have no idea if this was before or after he made his suggestion to the group, but I can say that he and I are in agreement: the window needed to be closed.

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 know the worst media mistake ever (define your criteria, and I can give you an answer); second, they want to know how to prevent factual errors.

via Checklists and Error Logs – good habits reduce errors : BusinessJournalism.org Reynolds Center for Business Journalism.

The above is an excerpt from the first edition of a new twice-monthly column I’m writing for the Reynolds Center for Business Journalism. I’ll be sharing tips and advice to help business journalists avoid error. I hope you’ll give it a regular look, and will share feedback in the comments.

We could do much more with corrections, of course. At a minimum, corrections should be databased. This shouldn’t be any more difficult than adding a correction field to each story in our CMS, instead of just writing our corrections into the body of the story itself. It would allow readers to search for corrections by date, section or author, rather than having to check the corrections page every day to see what’s been corrected recently.

We should also be much more proactive about getting corrections to readers. If you read something on our news site that has changed or been corrected since you last saw it, we should alert you of the change during your next visit to our site.

His second paragraph offers an idea that fits with my corrections and accuracy wishes for 2009. Thompson also had this interesting suggestion:

About four years ago, I daydreamed about an independent, crowd-sourced corrections site that would allow anyone to post a correction or clarification to information contained at any URI. In some ways, with the ubiquity of browser plug-ins and the like, that type of thing would be easier today.

It is easier today, and SpinSpotter is probably the most interesting initiative trying to make this happen.

From today’s column (click on the headline for the full text):

Checklist Charlie

In 1935, Boeing Corporation almost went bankrupt after its Model 299 long-range bomber literally crashed and burned during a U.S. Army flight competition. Major Ployer P. Hill, the pilot, and one other crew member died in the crash. As a result, the Army contract went to a competing company, causing major financial difficulties for Boeing.
As a consolation, the Army ordered a few Model 299s for further testing. The question was how to fly them safely. The New Yorker’s Atul Gawande writes that the Army eventually “came up with an ingeniously simple approach: they created a pilot’s checklist, with step-by-step checks for takeoff, flight, landing, and taxiing.”
“With the checklist in hand, the pilots went on to fly the Model 299 a total of 1.8 million miles without one accident,” according to Gawande. The Army eventually ordered thousands of the aircraft, which became known as the B-17.
Gawande’s December 2007 story is a paean to the checklist, one of the simplest and most effective error-reduction tools. Checklists have been proven to work for pilots, doctors, nurses, and even people working at a nuclear power stations. For example, the use of a World Health Organization surgical safety checklist helped reduce inpatient deaths following operations by 40 percent, according to a studyNew England Journal of Medicine. published in the
Checklists also work for journalists. We just don’t use them …

From my January 30th column:

Homegrown Errorists

The package arrived two weeks ago, a bulging manila envelope with a return address in Decatur, Illinois. Inside was a mass of paper with a polite letter placed on top.
“Dear Mr. Silverman,” it began, “you have published a book on errors found in journalism and have a website devoted to the subject.” The writer, Robert S. Reed, continued on for two pages:

As a subscriber to the Herald & Review in Decatur Illinois, I have seen hundreds of errors in newspaper articles in addition to errors in the photo captions and the headlines/sub-headings. Most are misspelled words, missing words, extra words, wrong verb tenses, and, in some cases, factual inaccuracies.
Two of the articles from 2008 are attached to illustrate my point … I am also attaching 82 photo captions that appeared in the Decatur Herald & Review in 2008. All contain errors of one type or another. The corrections are indicated in ink. Also enclosed are 35 copies of headlines and sub-headings.

The more than 100 clippings were roughly an inch thick, and Reed was as good as his word. Each page correctly noted a copy editing or factual error from the paper. Red ink was everywhere, and in all the right places. The collection represented hours of work, not to mention the time spent photocopying them for delivery to me.
Some may wonder why anyone would choose to dedicate this amount of time to cataloging the errors in their local paper. But it’s no surprise to me at all. I’ve seen it before. (Plus, I’ve dedicated the last four years to reading hundreds of thousands of corrections and errors. I’m in no position to judge.) …

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 my book corrections here.) Plus, the cover makes note of the fact that the book won the Arthur Rowse Award for Press Criticism from the National Press Club in Washington.

Free Accuracy Checklist

To celebrate the release of the paperback, I’m offering a free download of a special Regret the Error accuracy checklist. Reporters can use the checklist to help achieve accuracy in their work. Have a look:

Instructions

• Download the PDF file from Scribd.
• Print it off on a 4×6 piece of photo-quality paper. (Regular paper will also work.)
• Laminate it.
• Use a dry-erase marker (the finer the point, the better) to check off items as you complete them.

I recommend the photo paper, lamination and a dry erase marker because this process will enable you to use the same checklist over and over. Just keep it at your desk and reuse it for every story. Better yet, stick it to the corner of your monitor so it’s always in front of you. If photo paper/lamination isn’t your style, you can just print off a new checklist for each story. The laminated version is better because it saves time and paper, but it’s your choice.

This checklist is divided into four sections:

1. At the top is space to write the name of the story you’re working on. Underneath that are a few lines where you can list your sources for the story.
2. A section that lists a number of behaviors that will help you while reporting, such as “Ask sources to spell name & title.” Check off these items as you work on the story.
3. A section that lists ten different things to check when you’re finished writing the story. Again, check them of as you complete each task.
4. A section where you can write in story-specific items to check. For example, if a story contains medical terms and concepts, you would write them on these lines to make sure you check them before submitting the story.

Why a checklist?

Checklists help reporters and editors increase their level of accuracy. Checklists are also used in other industries and professions, such as medicine. Train yourself to use one, and you’ll make fewer factual errors. Seriously, it’s one of the easiest things a journalist can do to prevent factual errors.

This checklist is primarily aimed at reporters, but sections three and four could just as easily be used by editors. If you have any edits or suggestions for improving the checklist, please let me know. I’d also love to receive testimonials from people who use it.

Enjoy!

One key to handling errors effectively is to recognize they aren’t necessarily a reflection of your native abilities and intelligence, [Carol Tavris, a social psychologist and co-author of “Mistakes Were Made (but Not by Me)”] said. Once you have separated the action from you as a person, you can work quickly to correct the error and move on.

Because layoffs have shrunk the staffing of many businesses, “we need to recognize that we’re more vulnerable than usual to mistakes,” [Amy C. Edmondson, Novartis professor of leadership and management at the Harvard Business School] said. “We should be encouraging people to speak up sooner rather than later.”

The comment about layoffs will ring true to a lot of journalists.

Q. How do you start dealing with your mistake?

A. First, go to the people who are affected by it and apologize, Professor Edmondson said. Then work with them to correct the situation and come up with changes you can make so the error won’t happen again. The sooner you come clean, the better — both for your peace of mind and the good of the organization.

“Stand up, turn around, do it now,” she said.

Acknowledging a mistake is hard because of the fear of being perceived as stupid or incompetent, Dr. Tavris said, but keeping it inside can be an enormous psychological burden. “People are often surprised to learn that when they admit the mistake, not only do they feel better, but the response is often much better than they expected,” she said.

Another great section:

Q. Can your manager affect the way you deal with your mistake?

A. Your manager and company can make all the difference in the world in the way mistakes are handled. If your manager is the type who will become angry at you for a mistake, you will be less likely to disclose it — and that wastes valuable time, Professor Edmondson said.

The best companies make it a policy to show gratitude and reward employees for revealing their mistakes, Dr. Tavris said. Workers and managers need to view a mistake “as an inevitable human step on the path to improvement,” she said.

David D. Woods, a professor of human systems integration at Ohio State University, said managers need to make clear that “it’s more important to share the information than it is to identify the culprit.”

Occasionally, if a person makes many mistakes and cannot reduce them, a manager may realize that “this person is not well placed in this role,” Professor Edmondson said. “That’s not fun but it is a leadership job.” Still, she said, she has found that this situation is rare.

And here’s a good example of how the technologies we use can sometimes force us into mistakes (think spellcheckers):

Professor Woods gave an example of someone who inadvertently hits “Reply to all” in an e-mail message, sending confidential information to a large group. This could well reflect poor design of the e-mail system, with “Reply” and “Reply to all” placed too closely together, he said.

Finally, an endorsement of checklists:

Other examples of flaws, he said, are a breakdown in communication among departments, a fear among subordinates to question higher-ups and a failure to incorporate crosschecks — the way airline workers do for safety reasons — or checklists.

I’m working on a checklist-related project that I hope to unveil soon.