Kevin Bottrell is the editor of the Colby Free Press, a daily newspaper in Colby, Kansas.

"I've never written out a checklist for my newsroom, but your stories got me thinking and I do have one I run through every day, I've just never articulated it," he writes. "I quickly realized I need about three different checklists because there are three different areas to my job: writing, editing and proofing pages. I could add a fourth for page design, but I really do that in a more seat-of-the-pants fashion to keep my designs from being stagnant."

Here's his checklist, which covers three core areas for newspapers. He says he'll post it in the newsroom. Way to set a good example, Kevin!

Michael Moon is the journalism advisor at Kinston High School in North Carolina. He uses the below checklist in the journalism course he teaches. Nice job starting kids off with early checklists, Michael! This is a good one:

Amanda McAlpine is the arts and culture editor of the Campus student newspaper at Bishop's University in Canada. She recently saw me speak about accuracy and checklists at a conference held by the Canadian University Press. Now she's created her own checklist, and wrote to say that she's going to get her writers to create checklists, too. Great!

Her checklist is below. Also note that I sent her this after taking a quick look at it: "One piece of feedback is that there are lots of factual items that are used again and again in arts and cultural coverage, and you may want to add those to the final checks before submission section: album title, show name, ticket price, etc. They could go along with 'time and date of upcoming show' etc. But great to see you customized it."

Today's journalist checklist is a little bit different than the others I've shared. Mandy Jenkins is a social media producer for TBD.com, and she's one of the top folks currently filling that role at a news organization. So perhaps it's not surprising that she has come up with a checklist for social media. This is a fantastic addition to the world of checklists. From the post with her checklist:

In the rapid-fire world of social media, it’s easy for a journalist or news organization to make mistakes. Sometimes, these things happen in the heat of the moment, but more often than not the errors seem to stem from a widespread belief amongst journalists that Twitter carries less need for accuracy and accountability than the full-story medium. Recent events have told us otherwise.

I believe there is an ever-increasing need for accuracy and accountability in how we as journalists use social media.

Be sure to read her full post and tell her if you have any additions to the checklist. Here it is:

Emma Jacobs is a radio reporter with WKSG in Ithaca, NY. "My hangups are a little unusual because I'm reporting for radio first and then for web," she said. "A lot of one man band mistakes of omission. The on-the-spot trick is to remember to get stuff like [spelling and] pronunciation on your tape." She's the first broadcast reporter to send in a checklist, and here are her items:

Interview: name & title (spelling)

                Preferred contact info for follow-ups

                Ask what mistakes have been made on story

Recording – Pronunciation

Numbers – double check

                Refind in reports (link in notes)

Language revisions & spelling of web script

Check audio – transcripts of clips

Here's a picture of her checklist:

Madeleine Cummings is a student journalist for the McGill Daily at McGill University in Montreal, Canada. She recently saw me speak about errors, accuracy and checklists at the National Conference of the Canadian University Press. She then went home and put together the below checklist.

Cummings altered my checklist "to fit with the types of articles I'm usually assigned at the Daily. Clarifying hometowns is a big one for me — my name has definitely been spelled wrong many times, but seeing my hometown written as 'Peterborough' instead of 'Toronto' was awful! Often it can get confusing with young musicians who move from smaller rural places to big cities…"

Her checklist:

Lisa McLendon is the deputy copy desk chief at the Wichita Eagle. (She's also the vice president of conferences for the American Copy Editors Society.) When she was the head of the copy desk at the Denton (Texas) Record-Chronicle, she used the below checklist.

"Every cover proof got one of these attached to it," she said. "I think it cut down on picky mistakes, because we had to stop and pay attention to all the little things."

Yes indeed!

Eric Borer is the journalism assistant at the University of La Verne in Southern California. He's also the production manager and the business manager for the school's newspaper, the Campus Times. He got in touch to say the Times newsroom has long been using accuracy checklists to help with production and reporting.

"We have two checklists we use in the newsroom," he said. "One is a pretty no frills post-production/pre-flight checklist that we’ve been using for a long time – at least a dozen years or so. It was originally created by a former faculty adviser, but it’s been updated and tweaked a few times since then … For each issue, I generate one of those checklists for each page of our print edition. Completing the checklist is the student editor’s last step before finishing each page and putting it to bed."

Their second checklist is for student reporters. Borer said students have to use that checklist when they complete each draft.

"We’ve found both checklists to be a big help, particularly the production checklist," he said. "I’ve lost count of how many significant errors have made it all the way through our editing and production process, only to be stopped by that checklist. (In fact, that checklist itself owes its origin to a benign, but very embarrassing, error that made its way onto our front page once."

There you go: yet another testimonial to the value of checklists. Here's the story checklist, and the production checklist is below that:

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.

Checklists are the best tool for preventing factual errors. I want more of us in the press to use them, so I'm putting my money where my mouth is. You send me a picture of your accuracy checklist, I buy and ship you a copy of the Regret the Error book. That's the deal. (Use my free accuracy checklist as a basis to create your own.)

So far, I'm shipping a book to Steve Buttry and Lori Shontz for their checklists. Buttry's is here and Shontz's checklists are in this post. I'm thrilled to report I've received checklists from additional people. We're off to a great start. Remember to read my initial post to learn how to join in and get a free book.

As promised, I will share all of the checklists I receive. Today's checklist comes from Annie Labrecque, a science journalist in Montreal. Labrecque contacted me long before I made my checklist/book offer. She asked if it was okay for her to use my checklist create a French-language version for science journalists. Of course! Below is what she came up with. Don't worry if you don't speak French — a lot of the terms are similar enough to English that you can see what's going on here.

Her book will be shipped this week.

Annie Labrecque's checklist: Accuracy checklist for scientific article (French)

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.

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?