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?

An appraisal on Saturday about

Walter Cronkite’s career included a number of errors. In some copies, it misstated the date that the Rev. Dr.

Martin Luther King Jr. was killed and referred incorrectly to Mr. Cronkite’s coverage of D-Day. Dr. King was killed on April 4, 1968, not April 30. Mr. Cronkite covered the D-Day landing from a warplane; he did not storm the beaches. In addition, Neil Armstrong set foot on the moon on July 20, 1969, not July 26. “The CBS Evening News” overtook “The Huntley-Brinkley Report” on NBC in the ratings during the 1967-68 television season, not after Chet Huntley retired in 1970. A communications satellite used to relay correspondents’ reports from around the world was Telstar, not Telestar. Howard K. Smith was not one of the CBS correspondents Mr. Cronkite would turn to for reports from the field after he became anchor of “The CBS Evening News” in 1962; he left CBS before Mr. Cronkite was the anchor. Because of an editing error, the appraisal also misstated the name of the news agency for which Mr. Cronkite was Moscow bureau chief after World War II. At that time it was United Press, not United Press International.

This is a Stanley correction. I’ll have more on it in my Columbia Journalism Review column, which goes online tomorrow. Update: You can read it here.

Note that posting will be light today; I’m having some server issues and it’s difficult to add new posts.

…"frankly," that in light of Mr. Rivera’s reaction to the review, Ms. Stanley "would have been justified in assuming" – and therefore writing, apparently – that Mr. Rivera used "brute force" rather than merely a "nudge" on Sept. 4.

Calame says it’s "disturbing" that Keller seems to imply that Geraldo’s "bad behavior essentially entitles the paper to rely on assumptions and refuse to correct an unsupported fact." More from Keller:

…Mr. Keller’s final reason for rejecting a correction was that Ms. Stanley, "who is writing as a critic, with the license that title brings – was within bounds in her judgment." He elaborated: "Ms. Stanley’s point was that Mr. Rivera was show-boating – that he was being pushy, if not literally pushing – and I think an impartial viewer of the footage will see it that way."
Based on the videotape and outtakes I saw, Ms. Stanley certainly would have been entitled to opine that Mr. Rivera’s actions were showboating or pushy. But a "nudge" is a fact, not an opinion. And even critics need to keep facts distinct from opinions.

Calame also uses the column to draw attention to his ongoing dispute with Times columnist Paul Krugman (background here).

Meanwhile, in the opinion section of The Times, the corrections policy of Gail Collins, the editor of the editorial page, is not being fully enforced. As I have written on my Web journal, Paul Krugman has not been required to correct, in the paper, recent acknowledged factual errors in his column about the 2000 election in Florida.
The Times has long been a trailblazer in its commitment to correcting errors. This is no time to let those standards slip – even when well-known critics and columnists are involved.

The Times owes Geraldo a correction. It seems clear, however, that he won’t get one. This is conduct unworthy of the Times and it only emboldens its critics. Expect this episode to become a frequently-cited example of the Times’ supposed liberal bias and unaccountability. It didn’t need to end up this way.
Calame ends the column by drawing attention to what appears to be an inconsistent application of the Times’ corrections policy. Smaller errors such as misspellings or wrong dates are supposed to fall under the heading "For the Record," while more substantive errors run under the "Corrections" heading. It doesn’t always work out tht way. Here’s what Calame concludes:

Based on the last 30 days, my sense is that many of the errors falling between the two definitions are being treated as "For the Record" corrections.
The one-year mark could be a good time for the veteran editors who handle corrections to apply their long experience to a review of the existing definitions. I hope they would give serious consideration to broadening the definitions as a way to reduce the gap between them.
I would like to see the substantive category expanded to include errors that have practical importance for readers. If there’s an error in information that seems likely to become the basis for action or decision-making by more than a few dozen readers, I think it deserves the prominence offered by the current substantive category. One of the fine-tuning chores, of course, would be to calibrate how many users of the information should be required to qualify for greater prominence.

And, yes, this is a "Stanley correction."

…We all make mistakes–especially me–but Stanley’s pieces have had doozies.
The Times has issued corrections to point out that the WB is not a cable network and Fox’s short-lived hotel soap "North Shore" was not a program about the sex industry. Another piece, according to the correction, "misstated the political backdrop of the economic recession that preceded the good times that were the setting of `Friends.’"
A personal favorite, though, is the 2004 column that mentioned Adm. James Stockdale. As the correction said, "The admiral ran as an independent in 1992 with Ross Perot, not as a Republican in 1996 with John McCain, who was not a nominee." Um, yeah.

Then John Cook of Reference Tone went back and collected all of Stanley’s corrections since 2001. They’re listed here. Here’s what Cook, a former television writer for the Chicago Tribune, writes:

I immediately assumed that Rosenthal merely had it in for Stanley, a star of sorts on the TV beat who inspired envy among some critics (until a couple months ago, Rosenthal was the Sun-Times’ TV critic). So I Nexised "(byline)Alessandra Stanley and correction appended" and–my god. The woman is clocking corrections at more than a monthly rate. And they are stupid, stupid errors. Still, somehow I don’t get the sense that anybody’s writing any "we have to stop Alessandra Stanley from writing for the Times–now" memos.
…In the interest of brevity, I only went back to 2001, when Stanley started writing incorrect things about television, and I made them really tiny. In Stanley’s defense, her overall correction rate for that period is a not-quite-appalling-but-still-kinda-large 11 percent–she’s got an 89 percent chance of being right! Her rate for the past year is a disconcerting 14 percent, or a one-in-seven chance of being wrong.)