Tag Archives: chicago tribune

Battery stolen, not committed

February 27, 2006 – 8:00 am

An editorial in Friday’s paper incorrectly stated that Florida Cresswell, a candidate for state representative in the 28th District, was convicted in 1999 of battery and stealing Tupperware. In fact he was convicted of stealing a battery from a van as well as Tupperware that was inside the van. Link

By Craig Silverman | Posted in Newspapers | Also tagged | Comments Off

The Stanley corrections

September 13, 2005 – 8:00 am

nytbanner1Are corrections a good indicator of a larger problem?
That was one of the questions we posed to Seth Mnookin in a recent interview. Now two journalists are using corrections to question the competence of New York Times TV critic Alessandra Stanley. First, Phil Rosenthal of the Chicago Tribune penned a Sunday column that listed some of Stanley’s "more colorful gaffes." (The extra scrutiny of Stanley’s work is a result  of this dispute between her and Geraldo Rivera. Even the Washington Post’s Howard Kurtz has weighed in on Rivera’s side.) From Rosenthal’s column:

…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.)

By Craig Silverman | Posted in Newspapers | Also tagged , | Comments Off

Chicago Tribune or George Carlin?

October 28, 2004 – 11:33 am

Early Tuesday morning, several top editors from the Chicago Tribune were hard at work removing a section from that day’s paper. Once you can get past the image of highly-paid newspaper folks on their hands and knees physically yanking a section out of thousands of copies, the question of “why” becomes important. The answer: because some c*ck let a story get on the front page of the WomanNews section with a headline that included the word “c_nt”. That’s right: they were talking about the word “cunt” and decided to give the story a saucy headline. Give credit to the Wall Street Journal for getting the story:

The article, which ran under the headline “You c_nt say that,” was cleared by editors Geoff Brown and Cassandra West, who oversee the paper’s Wednesday WomanNews section. Tribune editors said Ms. Lipinski discovered the story was slated to run at the newspaper’s regular morning editorial meeting, but the section had already been preprinted ahead of the daily press run. A spokeswoman for the newspaper said a “very nominal” number of subscribers received the story and declined to comment on any possible disciplinary action as a result of the incident. She said the paper’s public editor, who addresses reader issues, plans to address the situation in a future column.

An editor’s note in today’s edition offered an apology. “Senior editors determined that the story was inappropriate after the preprinted section went to press. Most copies were removed from Wednesday’s edition of the paper, though a relatively small number of copies may still contain it. A new version of the section was printed in time to be distributed to a substantial number of readers today. Those who did not receive the revised section will find it in Thursday’s Tribune. The Tribune regrets any offense and inconvenience to its readers.”

Our favorite line in the story, however, is this: “Tribune editors said Teamster employees eventually forced them to stop pulling the section late last night because they needed to start printing another newspaper.” You know it’s serious when the teamsters step in because they want to work.

By Craig Silverman | Posted in Major Errors | Comments Off