Toward a Slow-News Movement Mediactive
mediactive.com | November 8, 2009
Dan Gillmor on speed v. accuracy

Jayson Blair Addresses W&L Journalism Ethics Institute :: Washington and Lee University
wlu.edu | November 6, 2009

The Public Editor – Recession, Revolution and a Leaner Times – Op-Ed – NYTimes.com
The New York Times | November 1, 2009
“Now, with an around-the-clock news cycle, reporters file throughout the day, and copy can be edited over a smoother cycle, she said. That is the goal, but the editing staff is dealing with much more copy than before, some online articles are now read by a single editor instead of four or five, and I hear regularly from readers complaining about errors in grammar, spelling and word usage.”

Reuters Editors Blog Archive Are we now too speedy for our own good? | Blogs |
Reuters UK | October 27, 2009

CNBC: We’re Not Going To Apologize For Blowing Friday’s Microsoft News (GE)
The Business Insider | October 26, 2009

Esther Dyson: Release 0.9: We’re All Fact-Checkers Now
The Huffington Post | October 21, 2009

My column looks at the issue in terms of the consequences of rushing out stories in today’s media environment, and why scoops aren’t what they used to be. This post examines the value of speed, and how it should be weighed against accuracy.

I confess that I started working on this several months ago, when New York Times public editor Clark Hoyt wrote a column that struck a familiar chord: the rush to publish news had apparently led to some inadequate reporting and sourcing in the paper.

It was a good column, the kind of inside look at how a controversial story unfolded that you’d expect a public editor to provide. I found myself agreeing with many of the points he made. But then Jon Landman, then the deputy managing editor in charge of the Times’ online operations, responded to Hoyt and expressed a different view of how the paper handled the story. Most important, Landman gave one of the best expressions I’ve read of the value of speed in journalism. He didn’t argue against accuracy; he simply said that the two need not always be seen as enemies.

Here’s how Landman began his third paragraph:

Of course working fast increases the chance of error and clearly that is a danger to acknowledge seriously and address carefully. But absence of error isn’t the only value. If it was, we’d long ago have scrapped daily and weekly newspapers and magazines in favor of refereed scholarly journals. Speed is a value too.

It’s rare to see a newspaper editor deal so frankly with the issue of accuracy, to not trot out the old “accuracy is one of our most important values” line. The truth is that, while accuracy is valued in journalism, it’s often subjugated in favor of other values. As Landman writes, speed can trump accuracy in the minds of editors. It happens all the time. We shouldn’t pretend that accuracy is always the most important value when it comes to the actual practices of a newsroom. (We also shouldn’t forget, as I note in my CJR column, that the difference between making an error and getting it right is often a matter of making one or two phone calls. Accuracy is often easier and faster to achieve than we think.)

Let me be clear that I’m not suggesting Landman doesn’t care about accuracy, or that he’s advocating ignoring it as a standard operating procedure. He’s simply stating the reality of how journalism works: accuracy isn’t always the number one concern. There is ample evidence to back this up.

Landman isn’t alone in pointing this out. Philip Meyer, one of the most important journalism thinkers/academics of the last couple of decades, made a similar case in his book, The Vanishing Newspaper. He wrote:

A newspaper with a zero level of factual errors is a newspaper that is missing deadlines, taking too few risks, or both. The public, despite the alarms raised in [American Society of Newspaper Editors] studies, does not expect newspapers to be perfect. Neither do most of the sources quoted in the paper. The problem is finding the right balance between speed and accuracy, between being comprehensive and being merely interesting.

There is a balancing act when it comes to certain elements of accuracy. It’s never okay to get someone’s name wrong, or to make a mistake about an easily verifiable factual error. I’m sure both Hoyt and Landman would agree with that. But, in some cases, editors have to make a call about whether they have all the facts, not just the right ones. That’s the kind of thing Meyer is referring to, and, I suspect, so was Landman. These calls have been made for decades, if not centuries, so they aren’t new to the online world. (What is new are the consequences of an incorrect report.)

When it comes to the online environment, Landman argues that it enables a media organization to improve the accuracy process, rather than degrade it:

When the reporting process plays out in public, that’s a good thing. Readers can and do participate. Their participation has a salutary effect on quality — millions of amateur editors catch a lot that a few professional ones miss. And the process of constant checks on the unfolding story produce incentives to keep pushing. In the Kennedy-Paterson story, the never-ending news cycle ultimately contributed to a good result — a story that got to the bottom of the strange back-and-forth between the Paterson and Kennedy camps, sorting facts from rumor and accusation.

This is akin to Jeff Jarvis’ mantra of “publish and correct.” Here’s what Jarvis wrote in a 2006 Guardian column:

We need to recognise that the internet alters how media operate. Blogs – whether written by professionals or amateurs – tend to publish first and edit later, which can work because the audience will edit you. In this medium, stories are never done; rather than turning into fish-wrap, they can grow and become more factual and gather new perspectives, thanks to the power of the link and, yes, the correction.

We all make mistakes. We’re human. And the internet makes our humanity more apparent than polished print and broadcast do.

I have to admit that even though he wrote the (excellent) foreword to the Regret the Error book, this philosophy always made me a bit uncomfortable. I suspect Hoyt may feel the same way. Why not wait 15 minutes or even an hour if it means getting the entire story right, rather than just most of it? When I have this internal argument with myself, I reply to that question by noting that readers can — and often do — spot things that journalists wouldn’t realize even if they waited all day before publishing. So there’s value in getting it out there. Accuracy is not always an absolute. I hate having to write that, but it’s true. Some things are non-negotiable, but others have shades of grey.

This is why journalists need to at least take a few moments and think about why they’re publishing something, and if their news values – speed, accuracy, and otherwise — are in proper alignment.

That’s one process we should never sacrifice for the sake of speed.

Press Accuracy Rating Hits Two-Decade Low – Pew Research Center
pewresearch.org | September 14, 2009
More bad news re: trust and accuracy.

DISPUTATIONS: Spy Games | The New Republic
The New Republic | September 16, 2009
Victor Navasky demands satisfaction from The New Republic.

FACTS, ERRORS AND THE KINDLE | More Intelligent Life
moreintelligentlife.com | September 4, 2009
I’m interviewed in this Economist story about book errors and corrections.

Accidental headline of the year | Media Monkey | Media | guardian.co.uk
Guardian | September 1, 2009

A horror story involving the correction of a published scientific article – Statistical Modeling, Causal Inference, and Social Science
stat.columbia.edu | August 25, 2009

4. We would create a service to notify online readers, should they choose to sign up for it, of errors we’ve learned about in our journalism. Users of this service could choose to be notified of major errors only (in our judgement) or all errors, however insignificant we may believe them to be.

I created a system like this for the Regret The Error book. Slate’s Jack Shafer also offers an RSS feed for his corrections. It’s an easy thing to do, and it’s a shame that so few media organizations offer a feed or email subscription for their corrections.

I’m pleased to announce that I will be joining PBS MediaShift as an associate editor. I’m very excited to work with Mark Glaser, his team, and the site’s many contributors. In addition to working with contributors on their articles, I’ll be writing a monthly feature for MediaShift. I’ll also be involved with MediaShift’s sister site, Idea Lab.

This news won’t have any impact on this site, and I’ll also continue writing my weekly column for Columbia Journalism Review. Among other things, the new gig, which is part-time, will give me an opportunity to expand the media-related topics I write about.

I hope you’ll consider adding MediaShift and Idea Lab to your feeds or your bookmarks if you haven’t already done so.

I start next week.

Hoyt’s column offers new information, such as how five different editors reviewed her story and missed the mistakes. This is a classic example of how easy it is for mistakes to end up in print. It doesn’t matter how many people look at an article; they have to know what they’re supposed to be looking for.

The most interesting revelation in Hoyt’s piece was that, after attention was drawn to Stanley’s errors in 2005, the Times introduced a program to increase the fact checking of her work:

For all her skills as a critic, Stanley was the cause of so many corrections in 2005 that she was assigned a single copy editor responsible for checking her facts. Her error rate dropped precipitously and stayed down after the editor was promoted and the arrangement was discontinued. Until the Cronkite errors, she was not even in the top 20 among reporters and editors most responsible for corrections this year. Now, she has jumped to No. 4 and will again get special editing attention.

The extra scrutiny helped. Then things regressed, and that’s the lesson here. The gap in the plan for “special editing attention” is that it doesn’t include a training component. Stanley could, with a little bit of effort, improve her level of accuracy. Additional oversight isn’t going to train her to be more accurate. It will make her more careful, but it won’t fix the source of the problem. Eventually she will stop receiving special attention and things will go back to the way they were.

It’s kind of a variation on the old “give a man a fish” saying: Give an error-prone reporter special editing attention and you’ll publish fewer of her errors. But train her how to be more accurate and she’ll make fewer errors. That’s a big difference.

I concluded my CJR column by writing that “whatever system [Stanley] has for checking her work isn’t sufficient. The same goes for how the copy desk is handling her articles. The Times can let her twist in the wind with errors like these, or realize this situation is hurting the organization and come up with a training program that helps her stop making simple factual errors at such an alarming rate.”

This is, as they say, a teachable moment. It’s an opportunity for the paper to create a newsroom-wide program that will help all reporters. After all, you can’t give everyone special editing attention. But you can teach good habits that prevent the need for special attention. Eliminate or at least reduce the errors at the source and suddenly there are less things that can slip through the cracks.

After my CJR column appeared online, I received an email from an editor asking me for some error-prevention advice. Here’s what I sent to him:

1. Self-Diagnose: Are you making or missing the same kinds of errors. Do you misspell names? Garble numbers? Etc. Take a month and track your mistakes. Write them down. Note how they happened and any other relevant information. At the end of the month, tally up your errors. Now you know your pain points. I recommend keeping an error journal; just create an Excel doc or Google Doc spreadsheet and keep track of your errors. This is hugely valuable data. (The Times has an internal errors database, so it already keeps some of this data.)

2. Create Good Habits: If you have a tendency to misspell names, then you need to start every interview by asking the person to spell their name. If, as an editor, you tend to overlook misspelled names, then the first thing you do with a new story is check the names. The key is to create habits/actions that are mapped to your mistakes. The best way to do this is to…

3. Use A Checklist: Whether you’re writing or editing, you should use a checklist to guide your fact checking process. I have a sample checklist available as a free download here. And if you need convincing, read this column about why checklists are so powerful.

I know one thing for sure: if Alessandra Stanley started using a checklist to review her work prior to sending it for editing, her level of accuracy would improve.

UPDATE August 3: Steven A. Smith has some good thoughts about this situation over on his blog. A sample:

Reporters with fact-error issues have to work a bit harder, have to develop personal double-checks that can be time-consuming and frustrating, especially on deadline. But that is the only way reporters can work themselves out of an accuracy funk. Some take on the challenge because of professional pride and a genuine desire to do their jobs as well as they can.

Others require a bigger stick. That’s just the truth of it.

I remember one reporter who worked on my regional staff at The Pioneer Press in St. Paul. He had experienced a terrible run of corrections, all the result of careless reporting practices. Working with him, we developed a series of steps he was urged to take before moving any story to his editors. Within days his desktop computer was covered in yellow sticky notes reminding him to check phone numbers and addresses, use the city directory, and so on. He took responsibility and his hard work produced results. His correction rate dropped dramatically and the new habits stuck with him.

But the reporter knew his job was on the line. ‘Fix it or lose it” was the message.

Was such a message delivered to Stanley at the time her editors developed a personalized editing program? If so, does the latest debacle mean she will lose her job? Should she lose her job?

Does “intellectual heft” in reporting compensate for inaccurate reporting?

Yes, those are the Obama kids. No, they weren’t involved in the story.

After being spotted by one blog, the image quickly spread. Some people said it was an example of the Times’ right-wing bias. The Times spoke up, publishing a story to explain the error:

…Executive Editor John Solomon said The Times published the story in its print edition without a photo, then editors sent it to the Web platform without an attached photo.
He said The Times’ automated “news themes” engine, constructed to match related content to the Web site, paired the Associated Press photo of the Obama daughters to the bylined story. An online editor later spotted the photo and added a short caption.
“That editor should have removed the photo from the site but did not recognize the inappropriate mismatching,” Mr. Solomon said. “As soon as we learned about the problem, we detached the photo from the story. We regret that this technical glitch led to an inappropriate pairing of the photo with the story and we’ve taken steps technologically and in our editorial process to try to avoid such an episode in the future.”
“We also hope this glitch does not distract from the important and well reported subject of the story: the crisis of school violence in one of the nation’s largest cities.”

The lede of the above story blamed the error on a “technical glitch.” Well, that’s partly true. But this error also occurred because of a lack of editorial oversight. The photo was automatically matched with the story, but someone should have approved it before the article went live. So, yes, a technical glitch. But also a process problem. Solomon seems to acknowledge this when he says that “we’ve taken steps technologically and in our editorial process to try to avoid such an episode in the future.”

Solomon also reacted to the incident by sending a memo to staff. It ostensibly reinforces the importance of accuracy, but I worry that it could result in Times staffers doing more to conceal mistakes. Here’s a relevant passage:

1. Any reporter or editor who makes an error in a story that requires a published correction must submit a letter to the Executive Editor and Managing Editor explaining the mistake and what corrective actions were taken. These letters will be placed in your permanent personnel file.

This sends the message to the newsroom that it’s better to conceal an error than correct it. I know that’s not what Solomon meant to say, but his policy will encourage some staffers to do everything they can to hide a mistake. After all, leaving an error uncorrected means they won’t have to own up to it in an embarrassing letter — a letter that will go in their personnel file.

Solomon is right to want to track errors and understand their cause. But his process is all about punishment and shame; it’s not about learning from mistakes. These letters of confession go into a person’s personnel file. Sure, that provides information for their annual review. But what about the organization as a whole? This information should be collected in a corrections database that helps the newsroom track and understand the most common causes of error. Don’t shame your staff with a high school-esque process that’s all about letters and permanent records. It will only make people want to hide their errors. That’s bad for the newsroom and bad for readers.

The third item in Solomon’s memo addresses the issue of training. I like that the paper is introducing an accuracy training program. But he’s presented it like a remedial class for bad reporters and editors:

All reporters who have had stories with published corrections in the last year and any editors who inserted errors into copy will be required to take a mandatory class on accuracy and precision to be held the first week of June and led by Carleton Bryant.

Clearly, being put in that class is a form of punishment. Ideally, it would be a badge of honor. All staffers should receive accuracy training to help prevent mistakes. They should also be encouraged to own up to their mistakes and share any personal tips for attaining accuracy.

The Times needs to adjust its accuracy plan. Make it about working together to attain a higher standard, rather than singling out staff members for punishment. Make it about learning from mistakes, rather than embarrassing people. Make prevention and correction a part of the paper’s culture.

A culture of shame and blame just makes people scared to get things wrong. It doesn’t help solve the problem.

Comedy of Errors

Jay Leno has made amusing, mistaken, and otherwise notable newspaper headlines a staple of his show. Recently, his rivals got into the media mistake act. This could either be a disconcerting example of kicking newspapers when they’re down, or perhaps it’s late night comedy’s way of reminding people that newspapers are still relevant. Either way, it’s been an amusing few weeks.
Last week comic Andy Kindler appeared on Late Show with David Letterman. Kindler, an occasional correspondent for the show, makes a habit of calling out other comedians and the industry as a whole during his annual “State of the Industry” address at the Just For Laughs Festival in Montreal.
I interviewed him a couple of years ago and listened to him launch bombs at Larry the Cable Guy, Wayne Brady, and Will Ferrell for his role in Blades of Glory. “I love Will Ferrell, but I don’t want to see Will Ferrell holding up the guy from Napoleon Dynamite while on skates,” he said.
Of particular note is the fact that Kindler had nothing but nice words for Letterman when we spoke. But that didn’t appear to be the case when he was interviewed by a fellow Montreal journalist just a couple of months ago. The Gazette of Montreal quoted Kindler as saying, “Bottom line is that Letterman is unwatchable now.”
As soon as he took his seat next to Letterman, Kindler began explaining that he had been misquoted. Letterman even pitched in by holding up a copy of the article in question…

Everything Old Is New Again

During The New York Times’s 4 p.m. news meeting on Tuesday, a gathering that draws top editors from the paper, the culture editor described a story for the next day’s paper that included a connection to a Times article from over a century ago
The current article reported about a secret inscription rumored to have been added to a watch belonging to Abraham Lincoln. On Tuesday, the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History revealed that it had opened the watch and confirmed the presence of the hidden message.
“Basically, as an aside, the culture editor said: ‘Interestingly, the Times wrote an article on the jeweler [who made the engraving] in 1906 in which he discussed the inscription. But it turns out he had it wrong’,” says Greg Brock, a Times senior editor and the person in charge of the paper’s corrections.
The assembled editors shared a chuckle about the mistake from roughly a century ago. Brock, however, immediately locked eyes with Craig Whitney, the paper’s standards editor and his boss. “We both kind of raised our eyebrows as if to say. ‘Hmm, maybe we should…’,” he says.
They did. On Wednesday, the paper published a correction to the erroneous article from 1906 …

Sources of Error

He spoke with a polished English accent, once shared a crème brûlée torte with Hillary Clinton, and spent part of the summer officiating tennis at the 2008 Beijing Olympics.
Charles Carlson gave every indication that he was a student worth watching at the University of Minnesota when he sat down for an interview with the Minnesota Daily, a student newspaper, during the Democratic National Convention in August. Carlson was an at-large delegate at the convention. He later announced his candidacy for the Minneapolis City Council.
“He was a Beijing Olympics tennis official and is a University graduate student, GLBT rights advocate and director of operations at a Minneapolis architecture firm,” read the Daily’s story about him. “Is there anything Charles Carlson doesn’t do?”
This week the paper answered its own question: tell the truth. An investigation published on Monday by the Daily revealed that Carlson had lied about many of his achievements.
There was no communal torting with Hillary, and he didn’t officiate at the Olympics. Carlson grew up and went to school in Minnesota, which meant his transcripts from Phillips Exeter Academy, Princeton University and two schools in England were forged. When confronted with the evidence, he admitted that he suffers from a mental illness for which he was once institutionalized. The English accent disappeared, too.
“I spent six years being a gay nothing that people just made fun of, and then when I was discharged I found out that people would believe anything you told them,” he told the Daily.
Carlson is far from alone in discovering that members of the public and journalists, be they student reporters or veteran scribes, will often take the facts at face value. An old saying in journalism holds that, “If your grandmother tells you she loves you, check it out.” It’s good advice, but rarely followed…

Close to Home

One strict rule in the medical profession holds that no doctors can treat themselves or any member of their immediate family. The press, however, is without a similar proscription. Be it good news or bad, news organizations routinely report about themselves.
Newspapers write obituaries for long serving editors, executives and reporters. An award for reporting or photography, or a spike or drop in circulation or profit, is always dutifully reported. Plagiarism or fabrication often, though unfortunately not always, results in a story.
Just as doctors can’t marshal the necessary detachment when examining their own condition, truth and accuracy can sometimes be sacrificed in the name of marketing. One of the best examples of spin you’ll ever see in a newspaper is when the latest circulation figures are released for a city with competing daily papers. Regardless of the figures, both sides will claim victory. (Sadly, it’s less of an issue these days.) …

The News Business Is Changing. Again.

Walter Isaacson began his recent Time essay about the news business by declaring that “the crisis in journalism has reached meltdown proportions.” He suggested that a micropayment system could help encourage people to pay for online news. For all of its faults, Isaacson’s argument did micropayments proud by inspiring many people to give their own two cents on the matter.

Setting aside the micropayments issue, we’re left with Isaacson’s declaration about the news business. Whether or not you share Isaacson’s view that journalism is in a state of crisis, these are undeniably interesting times for the profession. A wave of change is crashing over journalism and the business built around it. By my count, it’s the fourth such wave, at least in terms of accuracy and quality.

The first wave occured in seventeenth- and early eighteenth-century Europe during the birth of the newspaper. Prior to that time, printed news came in the form of “newsbooks.” These were one-off publications containing a mix of commentary and news that was gathered by word of mouth, from ship captains, or simply by copying from other newsbooks. Their ephemeral nature—a newsbook might appear one day never to be seen again—meant that most publishers didn’t have to worry about someone complaining about an inaccuracy in a previous issue. That changed when publishers started adhering to a set production frequency. The newsbook became the newspaper …

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.
• 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 you 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!

I’m usually so busy tracking corrections and errors that I don’t get a chance to write about the best ways to prevent and correct mistakes. With 2008 coming to a close, it’s a perfect time to list some of the things news organizations should be doing with online corrections, and share some of my ideas for new prevention and correction practices.

I decided to write these suggestions in the form of “Wouldn’t it be great if…” because if any or all of them take flight this year, it would be a great thing for corrections and accuracy. Here are my accuracy and corrections wishes for the new year:

Wouldn’t it be great if every news website had a regularly-updated online corrections page linked from their homepage?

Wouldn’t it be great if all news sites placed corrections within the offending article?

Wouldn’t it be great if news sites stopped scrubbing away errors?

Wouldn’t it be great if we had a way to automatically notify a website that a correction was made to an article they’ve linked to? I’ve taken to calling this the “Reverse Trackback” or a “Correctforward.” A Trackback is a way of automatically notifying a site that its content (usually a blog post) has been linked by someone else. We need to reverse this and create a system that spiders out a correction notice to news sites or blogs that previously cited the original, incorrect article. The notification could, for example, take the form of a comment on the related post. (”This is an automated message to inform you that the Regret the Error post you linked to has been corrected. Please read the corrected post here [link].”) This would go a long way to helping push corrections out to the public, which is what needs to be done on the web. We shouldn’t expect people to go hunting for corrections.

Wouldn’t it be great if we had a “Notify Me If This Article Is Corrected” button alongside all of the “Print” and “Share” buttons that appear on most online articles? The reader could simply enter their email address and receive an email if a correction was issued for the story. It’s great that more and more news sites are placing corrections within the story, but how many people go back and reread an article? A lot of readers are not seeing the corrections. As I noted above, we need to find a way to push corrections out to readers. This tool would enable readers to receive corrections for articles that they consider particularly important or useful.

Wouldn’t it be great if all news sites had an online form like the Chicago Tribune’s to help people report errors?

Wouldn’t it be great if readers could receive credit for spotting errors? For example, if a site asks people to create a user account, then that person’s profile could list “Number of corrections submitted” and “Number of corrections accepted.” It could also include “Letters to the editor published,” and a listing of that person’s comments on the site. Maybe the best error-spotter earns a prize at the end of the month or year? This system would encourage people to participate and contribute — and it would help decrease the number of uncorrected errors, which are a big problem.

Wouldn’t it be great if we could create standardized accuracy checklists for reporters, editors and other newsroom staff? These checklists (examples: 1,2,3) would help people take a systematic approach to verifying articles before they’re published. To see how checklists are helping improve intensive care in hospitals, read this great New Yorker article.

Wouldn’t it be great if we had a central place where people from different newsrooms could share tips for achieving accuracy? There’s a lot of knowledge out there, but it’s scattered among different organizations. A wiki for accuracy tips would help share knowledge and go a long way towards creating best practices.

What else would be great to see happen this year? Add your thoughts in the comments.