Tag Archives: Ombudsmen

Wash Post ombud links loss of copy editors to increase in errors

July 7, 2009 – 8:00 am

washpost4Just over two years ago, the public editor of the Orlando Sentinel wrote a column alerting readers to the fact that the paper had experienced a spike in the number of corrections. He was clear about the cause of the increased errors:

When the Sentinel tightened its financial belt back in June, it lost a wealth of seasoned veterans, many of them editors. Those journalists not only wrote headlines and captions. They also scrutinized the work of reporters — correcting spelling, straightening out syntax, double-checking facts — before publication.
With fewer people to do that now, less of that important work gets done, and the result is more published errors.

Yesterday, the ombudsman of the Washington Post wrote basically the same column:

…Growing numbers of readers are contacting the ombudsman to complain about typos and small errors.

"As a virtually lifelong subscriber, I am disheartened by the increasingly poor quality of the editing of The Post," wrote Richard Murphy of Alexandria. If typos can’t be caught by a spell-checker, "then The Post should restore a couple of copy editor positions. You have cut that staff too much."

The Post’s copy editors are among the best I’ve worked with during nearly four decades in the newspaper business. But they’ve been badly depleted by staff cuts as the money-losing paper struggles to control costs. Those who remain are stretched thin while The Post expands to a 24-hour news operation in print and online.

Between early 2005 and mid-2008, the number of full-time copy editors dropped from about 75 to 43 through buyouts or voluntary departures. It has declined further since then, but Post managers won’t provide precise figures beyond saying that six took a recent buyout offer. The need is so critical that most are being hired back on contract through at least the end of the year, and part-timers are taking up some of the slack.

Copy editors are the unsung heroes of newsrooms. Unknown to the public, and often underappreciated by their colleagues, they’re the last line of defense against a correction or, worse, a libel suit…

"By definition, you’ll see more errors when there’s reduced staffing," said Bill Walsh, the A-section copy desk chief. On a typical weeknight a few years ago, Walsh said, the three copy desks handling national, foreign and business news could rely on perhaps 20 editors. Those desks have since been combined into one desk, headed by Walsh. Today, he said, "there are some shifts where I’m looking at seven or eight people total."…

These papers are by no means the only ones experiencing a spike in errors due to the loss of bodies on the copy desk. Adding to the problem is the fact that the move online means papers are churning out more content than ever before. Yet copy editors — and magazine fact checkers — are being shown the door.

Carl Sessions Stepp examined how some newsrooms are coping with this challenge is his recent article, "The Quality-Control Quandary,” It’s a must-read. I fear, though, that few organizations are rethinking their quality control process and means of verification. They’re just trying to do more with less. It’s a recipe for disaster.

I looked at this issue in a recent essay I wrote for Harvard’s Niemen Neiman Reports:

For more than 100 years, one of the most recognizable slogans in journalism has been “All the News That’s Fit to Print.” Lately, The New York Times motto is being challenged by the familiar phrase, “do more with less.” This new saying was, in fact, the theme of the World Editors Forum scheduled for March, but the event had to be cancelled “due to the impact of the global financial downturn on newspaper companies.”

News organizations are shedding employees. Those that remain are expected to pick up the slack and also push ahead with digital initiatives. Included in the exodus are valuable copyeditors—the people in whose encyclopedic brains reside a lot of what prevents errors from surfacing in stories. The few, the proud—and disappearing—magazine fact checkers are also being told to grab their World Almanacs and Book of Facts and move along.

Accuracy is a huge journalistic challenge. When reporters are asked to take on more work while the newsroom’s same fallible processes and error-prone technologies remain in place, the result will undoubtedly be a further downward slide in quality. More errors will be followed by more apologies and more corrections. And this is happening at a critical time for journalism—a time when consumers are being asked by journalists using digital media to lend support to their newsgathering mission…

 

By Craig Silverman | Posted in Behind the scenes, Newspapers, Ombudsmen | Also tagged , , , , | Comments

Bill Keller’s regrets

February 6, 2009 – 8:00 am

nytbanner1New York Times executive editor Bill Keller participated in an online Q&A with the public this week. Some of his answers touched on accuracy, credibility and corrections. Here’s one relevant exchange:

Q. You’ve been the face of The Times through the very roughest times for The Times. Anything you regret?

— C.D. Monroe, Washington

… On Page 4 every day we publish some of our regrets in the form of corrections and editor’s notes. Every misspelled word, every unchecked fact, every time we failed to give someone a fair shake makes me wince. When we blunder in a bigger way — some of the credulous stories The Times published en route to the war in Iraq, for example — I ache for our precious credibility. Even worse is when we get it wrong and then insist on sticking to our guns. (I waited a year after getting this job before I wrote a mea culpa about some of our pre-war W.M.D. coverage.) I take some consolation in the fact that we try, as a rule, to own up to our mistakes and even learn from them. There is no worse feeling in this business, however, than the feeling that you have let readers down.

So, yes, regrets, I’ve had way more than a few. Thankfully they are outweighed by the thrill I get working with some of the most talented, conscientious, honorable people in journalism.

Keller also addressed questions about the paper’s public editor:

A number of news organizations have ombudsmen, independent representatives of the readers, who handle complaints and critique journalistic performance, often in the pages of the paper. The Times had long resisted the idea, largely because we thought it was our job as editors to represent the interests of readers. But after the famous Voldemort scandal of 2003, we realized we could use additional safeguards for our credibility. We created the job of “standards editor,” to make sure our policies on accuracy and fair play were rigorous and to help enforce them, and a “public editor” to serve as a kind of independent auditor, with freedom to air his judgments on the Web site and in the Sunday paper. (We also tightened our policies on corrections, anonymous sources and other issues important to our credibility.) The publisher and I hire the public editor for a fixed term. We recently announced that we were giving the current public editor a one-time-only one-year extension. I have long felt the two-year term was too short for someone who came to this complicated place from outside; it takes a while to learn your way around, and by the time one public editor has figured out the job I’m scouring the landscape for a successor.

Clark Hoyt is the third journalist to hold this largely thankless job — an assignment that makes you few friends in the newsroom, and inevitably leaves some readers dissatisfied. I find him very thorough in his reporting, fair-minded in his analysis, and unafraid of hard subjects. I think he does the job as well as it can be done. Sometimes I agree with his conclusions, even if he is calling us on the carpet. And yes, I sometimes disagree with him. He’s not my commanding officer, or the Supreme Court. He’s an independent critic, an outsider with a hall pass and a platform. He is entitled to respect, but I don’t think he expects conformity.

To answer Mr. Lucey, I hope Mr. Hoyt will stay put until his term expires in June 2010, and I fully support his independence.

Whether we have a fourth and a fifth and a sixth public editor is a question we’ll answer when the time comes. The idea of a public editor has never won universal acclamation in the newsroom. There are still some who believe we have enough independent checks in the legion of self-appointed press critics without paying one of our own. There are still some who think a public editor does more to undermine our credibility, by poking small holes in important stories, than to shore it up.

The other day in a meeting of senior editors I asked for an informal show of hands on the question of continuing the role of public editor. The room was about evenly divided. I’m keeping my own hand down until 2010.

But his most amusing response came after a question about how he spends a typical day:

Really? You’d be interested in that? Well, I think my life is pretty much what you would imagine it to be.

I wake up most mornings to the telephone, invariably some world leader or international celebrity seeking my counsel. Lately it’s been a lot of President Obama — again with the damn puppy? — but sometimes it’s Richard Holbrooke to pick my brain about Afghanistan, or Bruce Springsteen asking if it isn’t time for another Arts and Leisure cover story about Bruce Springsteen. The valet brings breakfast with the handful of newspapers that have not gone out of business. In the limo on the way to the office, I help Warren Buffett sort out his portfolio and give trading advice to George Steinbrenner, not that he ever listens.

At the office, Arthur Sulzberger Jr. and I have our morning conference call with Vladimir Putin, Hugo Chavez, Kim Jong-il and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad — plus Fidel Castro when he’s compos mentis. Dictating the world’s agenda entails a lot of conference calls. I’ve been encouraging the cabal to save some money by using iChat, but first we have to persuade Putin to wear a shirt.

Lunch at the Four Seasons is always a high point. Today it’s my weekly tête-à-tête with Bill O’Reilly. He’s really not the Neanderthal blowhard he plays on TV. He’s totally in on the joke. After a couple of cosmopolitans, he does a wicked impression of Ann Coulter. We usually spend the lunch working up outlandish things he can say about The New York Times and making fun of Fox executives. (Once Rupert Murdoch showed up for a lunch date, and O’Reilly had to hide under the table for half an hour.)

I spend most of the afternoon writing all the stories for the front page. (You knew those were all pseudonyms, right?) I write Tom Friedman’s column, too, but, I swear, Bill Kristol wrote all his own stuff.

By then it’s time for drinks and dinner. If you’re reading this, Julian, I think the duck tonight. I had the foie gras for lunch. And no time for dessert. The Secretary of State is coming by to give me a back rub.

Careful, Mr. Keller, I hear Secretary Clinton gives a mean Shiatsu massage.

By Craig Silverman | Posted in Behind the scenes, Newspapers | Also tagged , | Comments

UPDATED: How would you write this correction?

November 27, 2008 – 8:00 am

Derek Donovan, the readers’ representative of the Kansas City Star, yesterday took the unusual step of writing a blog post that invited readers to offer suggestions about the wording for a correction he was working on. From his post:

As I’ve written before, it’s The Star’s policy not to restate an error in a correction …
There was an error in yesterday’s paper that’s a little tougher.  A story about the last time gas was this cheap listed other things going on in the coutry at the time.  Among them, “Marines in Iraq committed a variety of abuses against Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib.”
Problem is that Abu Ghraid was an Army prison, and those accused were in the Army, not the Marines.  Big, big difference — and I understand any Marines who were offended by the mistake.
Right now, I’m leaning toward wording the correction thusly:
An item in the Nov. 25 FYI section should have said that Army soldiers abused Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib.
Does that work?  How could it be worded better?

The Star isn’t alone in having a policy that proscribes repeating the original error in a correction. Donovan writes that reprinting the mistake is “a bad idea because it puts the mistake in the paper a second time.” True, but repeating the mistake can also help people understand the nature of the original error. Some corrections are borderline incomprehensible due to the “don’t repeat the error” dance. Not repeating the error can raise questions in the reader’s mind. Take Donovan’s proposed correction:

An item in the Nov. 25 FYI section should have said that Army soldiers abused Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib.

With this wording, the only way to understand the nature of the paper’s error is to go back and read the original article. Maybe the story had said soldiers abused prisoners at a different prison? Maybe it reported the CIA had abused the prisoners? Or that the soldiers had abused Taliban prisoners? As worded, it doesn’t answer a fundamental question: what did the paper get wrong? Here’s a different option:

An item in the Nov. 25 FYI section should have said that Army soldiers, not Marines, abused Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib.

Or, for the don’t repeat the error fans out there:

An item in the Nov. 25 FYI section incorrectly identified those responsible for the abuse of Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib. It should have referred to Army soldiers.

I’m sure an editor could improve my wording, but you get the idea.

As a final note, it’s great that Donovan used his blog to share this process with readers and invite their input.

UPDATE Nov 27: This correction was published today by the paper:

A story in the Nov. 25 FYI misstated which branch of the military was involved in abuses at Abu Ghraib. Army soldiers mistreated Iraqi prisoners there.

A nice comprise compromise, I think.

By Craig Silverman | Posted in Behind the scenes, Newspapers | Also tagged | Comments

San Antonio Express-News alters corrections style, encourages readers to report errors

June 23, 2008 – 8:00 am

From a column by Express-News public editor Bob Richter:

Frustrated by the inability to do anything about the high cost of fuel or groceries and the egg-frying-on-the-sidewalk South Texas heat, let’s turn to something you and I have the ability to change for the better:
Making the San Antonio Express-News the most trusted, respected and accurate source of news and information in this region.
That high-minded language, by the way, is right out of the Preamble to our new Ethics and Practices policy.
One way to gain respect and credibility is to admit it when you’ve done wrong. To that end, the Express-News publishes corrections on Page 2A, under a headline “Setting it straight,” Many of the corrections you see there are reported by readers…
Last year, the newspaper published 494 Setting it Straights, about 41 per month.
This year, through May, corrections are down by an average of 10 per month. In only one month, January, have Setting it Straights even hit the 40 mark. But it’s early. Last Thursday we published eight corrections on 2A, the most in a long spell.
And while we ran nearly 500 Setting it straights in 2007 and are closing in on 200 so far this year, that’s not to say that journalists here – or South Texas readers – catch or admit every error…
The Express-News has long held that corrections shouldn’t repeat the error. For example, don’t say: “The Missions beat Frisco, 3-1, Saturday night, not, 3-2, as was reported on Page 10C of Sports on Sunday.” Instead, say: “The Missions’ score, as reported on Page 10C Sunday, was incorrect. The Missions won, 3-1.
The new ethics code allows for flexibility in writing corrections, designed to clarify mistakes for readers, rather than leave them wondering what was wrong…

By Craig Silverman | Posted in Behind the scenes, Newspapers, Ombudsmen | Also tagged , , | Comments

BBC Trust calls on BBC.co.uk to improve fact checking, updating of articles

April 25, 2008 – 8:00 am

From journalism.co.uk:

The sourcing and fact checking process for stories on the BBC News website must be addressed by management, the BBC trust Editorial Standards Committee has recommended.
The committee made the suggestions as part of its response to a complaint about an article on the site, which pointed to inaccuracies in the report on Congressman Joseph P Kennedy II’s marriage to Sheila Rauch.
During the complaints procedure, the online news team conceded to oversimplifying the story and admitted that this could mislead the reader.

From the committee’s findings:

  • The article had been fundamentally flawed and the complainant had provided useful and accurate information to assist the web team in correcting the story.
  • The web team should have acted more quickly in its responses to the complainant to ensure the story was corrected sooner than it was.
  • The wider issue of sourcing and checking stories for the news website was something for BBC management to address.
  • [The committee] would write to BBC management to request it reviews its policies as to the sourcing and checking of material facts within articles prior to publication on the BBC website.
By Craig Silverman | Posted in Behind the scenes, Ombudsmen, Online | Also tagged | Comments

More on NPR’s “dark continent” apology

March 3, 2008 – 8:00 am

Over the past couple of weeks, Regret readers have been debating the necessity of this NPR apology:

In our newscast at 9:30 a.m. ET on Feb. 14, the phrase “dark continent” was used by one of our newscasters in reference to President Bush’s trip to Africa. This was totally inappropriate and offensive, and we apologize. We will apologize on air in the 9:30 a.m. ET newscast on Monday, Feb. 18, for allowing such an antiquated and pejorative term to air.

Alicia C. Shepard, the NPR ombudsman, has now weighed in with her opinion. From her column:

…Did NPR owe an apology?
After the apology ran, some listeners were infuriated, thinking it unnecessary, claiming that NPR had succumbed to political correctness.
“As much as I believe in racial sensitivity, I draw the line at torturing the language or censoring our use of it to accommodate the hypersensitivities of the ignorant,” wrote Don Howe, a corporate trainer in Los Angeles. “NPR has done its mainly informed and well-educated audience a disservice by caving into a grossly misplaced sense of liberal guilt. I only hope you don’t apologize the next time someone uses the word ‘niggardly’.”
Some may recall that in 1999, a white Washington, D.C. city government official resigned after he used the word niggardly in a budget discussion with staffers. While the word means miserly with no racial connotations, some incorrectly assume it derives from a certain word that is definitely out of bounds.
“I think the bottom line is that so many people use code words and phrases to express prejudice- because outright racism can get you fired from many jobs nowadays- that people are understandably suspicious of any turn of phrase which hints at a racial stereotype,” Eric Deggans, media critic for the St. Petersburg (Fla.) Times told NPR. “So the broadcaster may not be guilty of anything beyond some ignorance in anticipating how her words might sound. But writers and editors have to be a bit more careful about how these phrases sound.”
Some word meanings evolve over time and become accepted. Others like “dark continent” retain their power.
“Even when not consciously selected, language that diminishes one group at the expense of others wields great power in naturalizing unequal power relations,” Prof. Martin A. Berger, who specializes in gender and race at the University of California, Santa Cruz, told NPR. ” It’s less useful to talk about ‘racist’ people, than to see how racialized patterns of thought and speech are structured into our lives.”
So should NPR have apologized?
Given the intense listener reaction, it would have been arrogant for NPR to ignore the use of the controversial term. But in not offering any serious explantion for its apology, NPR missed an opportunity for a broader discussion — on air, online, or both — about the power of language.

Given the interesting debate that has taken place on this site, Shepard’s last point is an excellent one.

By Craig Silverman | Posted in Online, Radio | Also tagged , | Comments

Calame vindicates Geraldo

September 26, 2005 – 8:00 am

New York Times public editor Byron Calame seems to have found his voice with a column about the Geraldo Rivera/Alessandra Stanley dispute. Calame watched the video footage in question and says there was no "nudge," meaning that Stanley’s description of one is false. Executive editor Bill Keller’s response to Calame seems to admit this. [UPDATE: The Times published an Editor's Note on September 27 that acknowledged there was no nudge. More here.] Here’s what Calame quotes him as writing:

…"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.

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