This is an interesting twist on the correction. Writer Malcolm Gladwell has taken to his blog to publish a correction to one of his New Yorker articles. A correction will also appear in the magazine (see below), but he used the blog to make sure it gets out as soon as possible. The correction:
To my chagrin, I made an error in my New Yorker piece “None of the Above.” In the “Bell Curve,” Charles Murray and Richard Hernstein did not advocate a “high-tech Indian reservation” for low-IQ groups. Rather, they warned that if current welfare policies continued, we would end up having to build high-tech reservations for those with low IQs–which is a very different argument, obviously (although not, if you think about it, any less ridiculous). I regret the error. The New Yorker will be running a correction.
Excellent. Why not first publish a correction in the medium that’s immediately available, and then follow up with another in the original medium? Of course, it only works if you do both. But by placing a correction in more than one place, you increase the likelihood of readers receiving the correct information.
UPDATE Dec. 17: The magazine has published a correction:
C
ORRECTION : In his December 17th piece, “None of the Above,” Malcolm Gladwell states that Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray, in their 1994 book “The Bell Curve,” proposed that Americans with low I.Q.s be “sequestered in a ‘high-tech’ version of an Indian reservation.” In fact, Herrnstein and Murray deplored the prospect of such “custodialism” and recommended that steps be taken to avert it. We regret the error.
As readers have noted in the comments, the error was quite serious. The correction in the magazine does a better job of communicating this fact. Though if I were one of the authors of The Bell Curve, I would have appreciated an apology.
Thanks, Ernest!
7 Comments
Not surprising that it’s Gladwell, a writer who clearly cares about leaving a ‘clean’ trail behind him and understands both print and the web pretty well.
Another thing I’ve noticed is newspaper columnists putting corrections at the end of their columns instead of in the newspaper’s regular corrections box.
On one hand, it can sometimes be a week between error and correction. On the other hand, more people will probably see it that way who don’t look at the corrections box.
Again, I think putting it in both is the way to go. A correction in the corrections box and an apology in the column. But that’s not the way it’s done.
Who is Ernest and why is he being thanked in this item?
Joshua: Ernest is the reader who sent me the link to this item. I make an effort to credit those who bring items to my attention. Thanks for asking!
Fagstein: It’s true that some columnists will place corrections at the end of their column, and not in the main corrections column. For example, it was only last year that the New York Times began running regular corrections to errors in its op-ed section:
http://www.regrettheerror.com/newspapers/ny-times-op-ed-section-finally-gets-around-to-correcting-errors
I agree that doing both would be better.
Gladwell’s correction on his blog falls a long way short of gracious for such an egregious error. And he has not yet acknowledged that his description of J. Philippe Rushton’s work is just as egregiously wide of the mark.
Here’s The New Yorker’s retraction, which is more gracious than Gladwell’s:
“CORRECTION: In his December 17th piece, “None of the Above,” Malcolm Gladwell states that Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray, in their 1994 book “The Bell Curve,” proposed that Americans with low I.Q.s be “sequestered in a ‘high-tech’ version of an Indian reservation.” In fact, Herrnstein and Murray deplored the prospect of such “custodialism” and recommended that steps be taken to avert it. We regret the error.”
Why didn’t the New Yorker publish the correction on its site immediately, too?