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.

The Club recently announced the winners, and there’s also a blog post here. I’ll be in Washington for the awards dinner on July 14.

With that in mind, why not buy yourself a copy? Just a suggestion…

Regretting Errors: The History And Current State of Media Accuracy, Errors, and Corrections
Craig Silverman, author of the new book Regret the Error: How Media Mistakes Pollute the Press and Imperil Free Speech (Penguin Canada/Union Square Press), will deliver a tour of history and today’s most outrageous and entertaining media mistakes and corrections, while also highlighting what over 70 years of scholarly research tells us about the level of accuracy in newspapers and television news. Learn how “Dewey Defeats Truman” happened and discuss the challenges and opportunities for press accuracy in the Internet age.

Silverman is a Montreal author, journalist and the editor of RegretTheError.com, an award winning website that reports on media errors and corrections. His writing has appeared in publications including The New York Times, International Herald Tribune, Montreal Gazette, Editor & Publisher, and Report On Business magazine, amoung others. He writes The Office, a weekly workplace culture column and blog for The Globe And Mail, and The Explainer, a weekly news column for Hour.

Nobody’s perfect – not even journalists . . . especially not journalists.

Reporters and editors make mistakes. Indeed, they are probably more likely than most to do so. For just as bartenders break more glass because they handle more beer, so journalists who traffic in facts are bound to drop some along the way. . . .

It is time for journalists to trade in their hubris and recapture their humanity and humility. And the best way to do that is simply to admit: We make mistakes.

Craig Silverman’s examination of the art of the correction in his blog and now this book could not come at a better time for journalism. For the public’s trust in news organizations is falling about as fast as their revenues (and, yes, those may be related). One way to earn back that trust is to face honestly and directly the trade’s faults. The more – and more quickly – that news organizations admit and correct their mistakes, prominently and forthrightly, the less their detractors will have grounds to grumble about them.

But for journalists, to admit mistakes is to expose failure; corrections, in this logic, diminish stature and authority rather than enhance them. In my experience, some reporters and editors have tended to think that if they just ignored a mistake for long enough, it – or at least its memory and stench – would fade away.

But now that journalists’ readers and sources can be heard via their personal printing presses on the web, it is no longer possible to ignore errors or, worse, to hide them. . . .

But this discussion should be about so much more than just errors and corrections. This is about new and better ways to gather, share, and verify news. And it is about a radically different and improved relationship between journalists and the public they serve. These changes in the culture and practice of journalism will not just bolster journalism’s reputation but expand its reach and impact in society.