His successor, Patrick B. Pexton, has now weighed in with a blog post that looks at recent errors in the paper, and also quotes an anonymous message from a former* staffer. From the message:

I have been reluctant to write this e-mail. But I can no longer hold my tongue. The quality of copy editing at the paper is abysmal. Yet again, while reading a story, I have found another error — a ‘they’ where it should have read ‘the’ — that literally made me stop reading the story and write this e-mail.

Unfortunately, it’s not a rare occurrence — countless stories and blogs with words left out or misspellings or grammatical errors. Is anybody reading what goes on up on the Web site or in the paper?

Pexton cites three causes of error:

First, mathematics is at play here: Fewer editors plus much more copy equals more mistakes. The Washington Post is not just a print publication anymore — far more copy, from stories to blogs, exists online than in print. The print edition is a fraction of what editors edit every day.

Second, copy editors (multiplatform editors, in today’s parlance) also now deal with material for mobile devices and tablet computers. Each of these four platforms — print, online, mobile, tablet — has different procedures and may require distinct headlines and captions; a story can be prepared by the copy editor not once but four times.

Third, mistakes occur more frequently online than in print, generally, because online copy goes through fewer editors. Stories headed into the newspaper go through more editors. But online errors are easier and faster to correct. Print is still forever. Readers take mistakes in print more seriously than online errors.

He ends with this: “Something has to be done to shake up the copy editing system at The Post so it doesn’t let mistakes like this weekend’s get published. It’s too important to the credibility of The Post.”

Looking back at what Alexander had written, I was reminded the paper had already shaken up its copy editing system. Alexander’s final column mentioned mistakes at the paper. After that was published, there was this response from Post executive editor Marcus Brauchli in a Q&A with readers back in January:

The ombudsman is right that there have been too many careless errors lately–typos, grammatical errors, silly factual mistakes. I don’t want to make excuses, because we shouldn’t tolerate these sorts of errors. But by way of explanation I will say that we have made a number of changes in our processes in the last couple of years and are putting in a new editing system that will further change workflows for editors.

So is the new editing system not fully in place? Is it in place and not working? Have things actually improved compared to a couple of years ago? I encourage Pexton to get some answers to these questions. (And for Post staffers to contact me or add a comment.)

Also: Check out Erik Wemple’s take on Pexton’s post.

*Correction October 25, 2011: I forgot to put the word “former” in front of the word “staffer” when referring to a message that had been sent to Post public editor Patrick B. Pexton. This gave the incorrect impression the message he was sent came from a current employee of the paper, rather than a former one. I added the word in the sentence. Thanks Doug!

Here’s the editor’s note that was added to the offending piece:

This article in the April 17 Travel section included material that was taken without attribution from a documentary film. The article explored the Warhol museum in Medzilaborce and the reaction of Warhol’s relatives in nearby Mikova to the late artist’s notoriety. The writer, a freelance contributor to The Post, described a scene of men in rabbit-fur caps fixing a car exhaust and giving directions to the relatives’ home and mentioned passing a Soviet tank. Those scenes appeared in “Absolut Warhola,” a 2001 film by Stanislaw Mucha. The writer also used without attribution quotes from the documentary of conversations with Warhol’s cousin Michal Warhola and Warhol’s elderly aunt. In addition, while the article appeared to be based on a single trip, in fact it was based on several journeys, including one 10 years ago. The Post apologizes to filmmaker Stanislaw Mucha and to its readers for these lapses.

And here’s an excerpt from Pexton’s column:

… some of the quotes and scenes in the story were lifted, without attribution, from a documentary film about a journey to the museum made by Stanislaw Mucha in 2001. You can watch the film, “Absolut Warhola,” here on YouTube. A sharp-eyed Post reader remembered the documentary and informed the Travel section.

Travel editor Joe Yonan and deputy editor Zofia Smardz then contacted Rigney, asked him more questions and did more fact-checking on his story. Turns out Rigney, who has also written for the Christian Science Monitor, had made several trips, some dating back 10 years, to the Warhol museum, and the story was based on all of those, not just a recent trip.

When confronted by The Post, Rigney acknowledged that he “nicked’ some of the scenes and quotes from the documentary. Yonan and Smardz’s further fact-checking did determine that Rigney had been to the museum again recently and did in fact talk to the museum director.

They also fact-checked, as best as they could, two other stories Rigney had done for Travel, one about Berlin’s underground World War II bunkers and a second about Montenegro’s remote seaside towns. The bunker one checked out, but Rigney’s first-person account of his walking tours of Montenegran towns was almost impossible to verify, except that the towns described do exist, and seem to fit his descriptions.

There’s also a section that deals with fact checking, or the lack thereof at the Post and other newspapers:

But as for preventing any further instances of this kind of thing, here is the reality. The Post does not have an army of fact-checkers, as Kevin Sullivan, Post Sunday editor, explained. The paper can’t send staffers to Eastern Europe to fact-check every travel story. The Post is vulnerable to a one-shot deception by an unscrupulous freelancer.

Fact checking does not require you to send checkers around the world. Sure, that would be ideal, but it’s not what the New Yorker does to check articles. Sames goes for the other publications that employ staff or freelance checkers. It’s not clear if Sullivan made the comment about flying checkers to Eastern Europe, or if it was Pexton’s addition. Either way, it demonstrates a lack of understanding of the basics of fact checking.

“We can be ever-vigilant and spot-check what we can, but I’m afraid that if a writer is intent on plagiarizing or otherwise violating basic journalistic practices, given our resources it will indeed be difficult to always catch it,” added Joe Yonan, Travel editor.

Yonan is correct: the lack of controls at the Post and other newspapers makes it highly unlikely that a dedicated plagiarist would be caught prior to publication. As I previously detailed here and here, papers simply aren’t checking for plagiarism. As noted above, they also aren’t fact checking in any systematic way.

So, yes, this will just keep happening.

This, from a local Fox affiliate, may be the worst one I’ve come across (Update: actually, have a look at this video lower down in the post):

Reporting that President Obama has been killed instead of Bin Laden? Yeah, pretty bad. Then there’s this tweet from MSNBC correspondent Norah O’Donnell (thanks, Mallary!):

Gizmodo also has examples from the BBC and a different Fox affiliate than the one featured above. The Fox station later posted a story about all of the Obama/Osama mixups. It mentioned the other Fox affiliate as well as errors from CNN, the Modesto Bee, ABC News and Fox News. And after all of that, they admitted their mistake:

FOX40 also briefly had a graphic up with the wrong name. The original graphic talked about “OBAMA NATIONAL SECURITY ANNOUNCEMENT” and the B remained when it was changed to “OSAMA BIN LADEN.” Station management apologized for the error, as did the network anchors.

What else? Here’s a CNN typo talking about “Obama’s compound” in Pakistan:

Sky News declaring Obama’s death:

Update May 2: Here’s an example from NPR (thanks, Parker!):

Update May 3: A correction from the Charlotte Observer:

A front-page story in some editions Monday incorrectly referred to Osama bin Laden as Obama. In the same story, a photograph cutline wrongly said two aircraft hit the same tower of the World Trade Center. The planes hit different towers. Link

Update May 4: The South China Morning Post published this incorrect correction today:

In a headline on page A2 yesterday, the US president’s first name was erroneously given instead of that of Osama bin Laden. We apologise for the error.

Why is it incorrect? Because the paper made an Obama/Osama error — and that involves the US president’s last name.

Update #2: Huffington Post put together a great video compilation of all the on air flubs:

This may in fact be the worst on air Obama/Osama mixup of all. As New York magazine noted in its headline, “News Anchor Made ‘Osama’/‘Obama’ Gaffe Three Times in Seventeen Seconds.” Part of it is included in the above HuffPo compilation, but this is the full version. From Global TV in Canada

Update May 5: Yet another correction from the Charlotte Observer:

In some editions Wednesday, a front page story about tensions between the U.S. and Pakistani governments incorrectly referred to Osama bin Laden as Obama.

Update May 8: A May 6 correction from the Guardian:

An article meant to name Osama bin Laden, but instead said: “Asked on Wednesday whether the team that killed Obama had come under fire, (Jay) Carney said the White House had gone to the limit in providing details and that any more would risk future operations” (Photos reveal gruesome aftermath of Bin Laden raid, 5 May, page 9 turn from page 1, early editions). Link

Update May 11: From the Sacramento Bee:

A Washington Post story on Page A12 on May 2 and a McClatchy Newspapers Washington Bureau story on Page A13 on May 6 mistakenly used the name Obama instead of Osama in references to Osama bin Laden. Link

Two articles published by The Post online and in its print editions earlier this month contained substantial material that was borrowed and duplicated, without attribution, from The Arizona Republic newspaper.

The articles described an indictment of Jared Lee Loughner for murder and attempted murder in the January rampage that wounded Rep. Gabrielle Giffords and the subsequent unsealing of court records supporting a search warrant in connection with the case.

In the article about the indictment, which appeared on The Post’s website on March 4 and on page A3 of the print edition of March 5, two paragraphs about a provision in federal civil rights law that applies to hate crimes were copied from the Republic’s work. The article also included without attribution other facts previously reported by the Republic.

The article detailing what investigators found in their search of Loughner’s home, which appeared online on March 10 and was published on page A3 in the newspaper of March 11, was substantially drawn from an article that appeared in The Republic. Ten of the article’s 15 paragraphs were copied in whole or in part from an article that first appeared in the Republic.

It is The Post’s policy that the use of material from other newspapers or sources must be properly attributed. The Post apologizes to the Arizona Republic and to its readers for this serious lapse.

The note did not name the guilty party, but media blogger Greg Mitchell did:

I'll ask the question I always do in this scenario: has the Post investigated Horwitz's previous work for other evidence of plagiarism?

Update March 16, 2011: Former Washington Post reporter Howard Kurtz has additional information:

Tamika Felder figured she was young and healthy and could skip getting Pap smears for a few years when her job didn't offer health insurance.

She was wrong.

In 2001, at 25 years old, the television producer from Upper Marlboro, Md. was diagnosed with cervical cancer and needed a hysterectomy, chemotherapy and radiation. She was left unable to bear children.

"I didn't want to lose my womb. I didn't want to lose my fertility. But I was tossed into this world of cancer," said Felder, now 35. "It changes you in such a profound way. You have to rebuild your whole life." THE QUOTE YOU NEED HERE, GIVEN THE REST OF THE PIECE, IS ABOUT HOW SHE COULDN'T AFFORD THE HEALTH INSURANCE. DID SHE NOT HAVE A PAP SMEAR OR DID SHE ALSO STOP SEEING HER OB/GYN? IF IT'S THE FORMER SHE SHOULD SAY HOW SHE WENT TO THE OB/GYN BUT DECLINEE THE PAP SMEAR BECAUSE IT WAS TOO MUCH AND SHE FIGURED SHE WAS YOUNG SHE'D BE FINE.

THEN THE NEXT GRAF COULD BE THE QUOTE YOU USE ABOVE.

THIS GRAF SENTENCE NEEDS TO BE TWEAKED. Each year, about 12,000 U.S. women get cervical cancer and (ANOTHER? OR IS THIS PART OF THE 12,000) 4,000 die. YET DOCTORS VIEW CERVICAL CANCER AS A disease THAT WITH PROPER SCREENING can easily be prevented and treated. Pre-cancerous lesions and early cancer are easily detected through screening. Lesions can be removed in a minimally-invasive procedure before they turn into cancer. And there's a vaccine against the sexually transmitted virus that causes most cervical cancer cases.

HOW ABOUT: BUT FELDER'S CASE IS A GOOD EXAMPLE OF WHY THIS MOSTLY CURABLE DISEASE IS STILL A THREAT/IS STILL KILING PEOPLE, DOCTORS SAY. TOO OFTEN WOMEN WHO DON'T HAVE HEALTH CARE COVERAGE OR THOSE WHO,HAVE not HEARD ABOUT THE IMPORTANCE OF REGULAR SCREENINGS—DESPITE YEARS OF PUBLIC CAMPAIGNS—DISCOVER THE PROBLEM WHEN THE DISEASE HAS ALREADY PROGRESSED TOO FAR .

YOU NEED A GENERAL QUOTE HERE TO SUPPORT THE GRAF ABOVE. THE KRISHNAN QUOTE BELOW IS TOO SPECIFIC. YOU NEED SOMETHIGN THAT SAYS: THIS IS A PREVENTABLE DISEASE, BUT WHEN PEOPLE DON'T OR CAN'T GET SCREENING, IT BECOMES A DEADLY ONE …

Because of incorrect information from the Prince George's County Animal Management Group, this Animal Watch item incorrectly referred to a bird rescued Feb. 5 in Laurel in an incident in which an animal control officer passed out. The bird was an eagle, not an owl. The group later described the bird as a hawk before correcting that to eagle. The item referred to it as an owl in one instance and a hawk in another. The item also contained incorrect information from the group about the location of the incident and the collapse of the animal control officer. It was near Dorset and Brooklyn Bridge roads, not at Woodview Terrace and Brooklyn Bridge, and the officer was not attempting to retrieve the bird when he passed out.

Aside from the many mistakes, it's remarkable because the correction is almost 30 words longer than the original, offending item (see it at the above link). And in fairness, it appears as though the source of information was at fault for many of the mistakes. Maybe next time double check the info provided by Prince George's County Animal Management Group…

… has become riddled with typos, grammatical mistakes and intolerable "small" factual errors that erode credibility. Local news coverage, once robust, has withered. The Post often trails the competition on stories. The excessive use of anonymous sources has expanded into blogs. The once-broken system for publishing corrections has been repaired, but corrections often still take too long to appear. The list goes on.

Much of this is a result of upheaval, disruption and necessary cost-cutting. Over the past few years, once-separate

print and online staffs have been combined. The traditional newsroom structure was blown up and reconfigured. New editors are in charge. Scores of staffers have been reassigned.

And in a Q&A with readers, Post executive editor Marcus Brauchli seems to agree:

The ombudsman is right that there have been too many careless errors lately–typos, grammatical errors, silly factual mistakes. I don't want to make excuses, because we shouldn't tolerate these sorts of errors. But by way of explanation I will say that we have made a number of changes in our processes in the last couple of years and are putting in a new editing system that will further change workflows for editors. We try to be diligent about publishing corrections, and the data are interesting: we published 1,054 corrections in 2010, up from 1,040 a year earlier and 961 in 2008, but down from a recent high of 1,319 in 2005. We have room to improve.

It's good news that the Post is bringing in a new system. The old one has been cut and altered to the point that it's a shell of its former self. Let's hope the new system improves workflow and quality. A challenge, to be sure. But a worthy one.

The holiday season is supposed to be a time of happiness, but there has been little cheer from readers upset about a chronic Post problem: a lack of quality control.

The past few years have seen a crescendo of complaints about typos, grammatical errors and minor factual mistakes. In recent weeks, a string of lapses has heightened reader despair.

For example, the Page One table of contents in last Sunday's Post referred readers to the Travel section inside the paper. But there was no Travel section. Nor were readers alerted to the change beyond a small editor's note a week earlier saying the section wouldn't appear the following Sunday. Travel Editor Joe Yonan acknowledged the misstep. That was little solace for readers such as Harry Seamen of Bedford, Pa., who complained of misspelled words and grammatical errors in addition to the missing Travel section. "It's almost like a pre-final edition of the paper got released," he wrote …

– via Readers fume over latest Post errors, a column from Post ombudsman Andrew Alexander.

Thanks Daniel!

A recent Post story said that of the $1.3 million the D.C. Salvation Army collected during its annual Red Kettle fundraising drive last year, about $667,000 came from outside local Giant supermarkets.

"That's a little less than half of the group's holiday total," The Post reported.

"It's actually a little more than half," an annoyed reader e-mailed. "When a journalist gets numbers wrong or does the math and gets that wrong, it reflects badly on the journalist, his employer, and news purveyors in general."

A review of published corrections for the past three months shows that few days passed without a numbers error. I regularly hear complaints that numbers in Post stories don't add up.

Some involve faulty statistics. Others result from math errors. Many are inexplicable, such as last Tuesday's A-section story that said new industry-wide health-care rules, "will affect about 180 Americans with private insurance" (it should have been 180 million). All damage credibility.

"It's amazing what a minor numerical error can do," said journalist Craig Silverman, who tracks news media mistakes on his Regret the Error Web site. When a news organization inaccurately reports that a large company lost billions instead of millions of dollars, he said, "the story is completely blown apart. It really contributes to misunderstanding."

In the digital age, with a growing amount of raw data available online from government and other sources, numerical literacy has never been more important to journalists. Exploiting that data can yield powerful findings, such as The Post's recent numbers-rich "Hidden Life of Guns" series that traced weapons used in killings of police officers.

"Today's journalists no longer just cover the fire and the city council meeting," said Scott R. Maier, an associate professor of journalism at the University of Oregon who specializes in newsroom numeracy. "They try to explore what's happening behind the story, and that often involves math."

But newsrooms seem phobic about numbers. That self-perception is so deep-rooted that it's often joked about among journalists …

– via a recent column by Washington Post ombudsman Andrew Alexander, "Post stories that just don't add up.

Thanks, @RobinJP!

… the Post regularly prints letters either on the editorial page or in the "Free For All" page on Saturdays that point out errors, but then does not actually print a correction on A2 or append a correction to the article online.

For example, the Post still has "Inventory Uncovers 9,200 More Pathogens" as the headline on an article from more than a year ago. That's despite the paper printing a letter a week and a half later 6/27/09, available through Nexis noting an error …

– via WashPost's Bizarre Watergate Mistake Latest Example of Paper Not Correcting Errors Flagged by Readers.

Tuesday marked the 30th anniversary of the day these words appeared on a front page of the Sunday Washington Post:

"Jimmy is 8 years old and a third-generation heroin addict, a precocious little boy with sandy hair, velvety brown eyes and needle marks freckling the baby-smooth skin of his thin brown arms.

"He nestles in a large, beige reclining chair in the living room of his comfortably furnished home in Southeast Washington. There is an almost cherubic expression on his small, round face as he talks about life — clothes, money, the Baltimore Orioles and heroin. He has been an addict since the age of 5.

"His hands are clasped behind his head, fancy running shoes adorn his feet, and a striped Izod T-shirt hangs over his thin frame. 'Bad, ain't it,' he boasts to a reporter visiting recently. 'I got me six of these.'"

It was an anniversary most would like to forget. "Jimmy's World" was all a fabrication, created by reporter Janet Cooke, who went on to win a Pulitzer Prize that the Post was forced to return.

Thirty years later, Cooke's name is synonymous with the hoax she created. Her story is taught in journalism schools, and some say a portion of the damage she wreaked on the credibility of the news media remains.

"How could she do it? I still don't understand that," Benjamin C. Bradlee, the Post's executive editor at the time, told Journal-isms on Wednesday. "She was just one in a million."

He noted that the Post has had no similar incidents since, and that while today's news industry has its woes, cases like Cooke's are thankfully not among them.

Still, asked whether the Cooke affair and its aftermath continue to resonate, Bradlee confessed, "They do in my soul." …

– via Cooke's Hoax Still Resonates After 30 Years | The Maynard Institute.

Thanks to Kathryn Schulz, author of Being Wrong: Adventures in the Margin of Error, for sending it along.

Dean Miller, director of the Center for News Literacy at Stony Brook University, says news consumers should pay attention to what he calls "the APCs" to determine the validity of an online source of news. That stands for Authority, Point of View and Currency e.g., whether the site has recent information and the links are still live.

Miller noted that the Egg Safety Center site includes the logo for United Egg Producers. "On the one hand, that gives that source of information a fair amount of authority," Miller told me. "Certainly they should know about eggs. But they have a point of view. You've got to take this information with a grain of salt. Maybe there's an independent source of information on this."Miller was surprised media outlets directed their audiences to the site without noting its industry ties."

When you're curating the link, you could say here's the industry's egg safety information, and you could pair it with other egg safety information sources," he said. "I don't want to pass judgment on the scientific validity of what's there. It may be quite good. But, as a news consumer, you would stop and say the egg industry, at a minimum, might phrase things differently than an independent scientist would. The egg industry has a dog in the fight, as we would say."

– via Poynter Online – Making Sense of News, an interesting look at how the Washington Post and other media outlets ended up presenting an egg industry website as an independent source of information about the egg recall.

Jonathan Capehart is an editorial writer for the Washington Post, an MSNBC contributor and a seemingly smart, nice guy. If he is indeed a nice guy, he will probably have to just grin and bear it for a few days after a somewhat ill-conceived blog post made Monday night. In an entry in WaPo's "PostPartisan" weblog, Capehart led with the following:

"Why have the wars cost so much under Obama?" tweeted @RepJackKimble (R-Calif.) at 7:40am on Sept. 2. "Check the budgets, Bush fought 2 wars w/o costing taxpayers a dime." This stunning bit of fiscal ignorance earned him a tart barnyard expletive from @MWJ1231.

Capehart didn't realize that Kimble's ignorance is "stunning" because "Jack Kimble" is a joke Twitter account …

via Washington Post Blogger Doesn't Get the Joke | The New York Observer.