corrections

Fri Dec 30 06:57:11 UTC 2011

I have stumbled on a newspaper post on corrections that ends up
referring to an entire blog dedicated to newspaper corrections. Some are
of general interest, a couple are of specific interest here. I won't
presume which is which and will mention things in a random stream of
errors ;-)

http://goo.gl/qxE5Q

This is the post from San Ramon Express News/Danville Express. The post
links to regrettheerror.com, which Google and Mozilla promptly block as
a malicious attack source. Whatever the reason for this label, I could
not get to the content. The second site is not linked, but is simply
mentioned as "The Poynter Institute runs a blog of the same name".
That's not quite accurate.

Indeed, Poynter has such a blog (Regret the Error)--it simply moved over
to Poynter ( http://goo.gl/tn91s ). In fact, the entire RtE archive has
been ported to the Poynter site--apparently to fill the giant hole left
by the departure of Romenesko. The blog is now here http://goo.gl/UtMWt

Craig Silverman--the proprietor of this blog who also used to run Behind
the News at CJR ( http://goo.gl/z5f9C )--reported on his
correction-reporting habits:

http://goo.gl/UeXp4
> Here's what I said in a 2006 interview about my system for finding
> corrections:
>
>>         It's a complicated process that involves Johnny Walker Black,
>>         Factiva, Firefox, three monkeys, a ladle, four cups of flour,
>>         and a very annoyed girlfriend. In all it takes me between one
>>         and three hours each day to do the site.
>>
> I would like to update the above to note I currently use Nexis instead
> of Factiva, Chrome instead of Firefox (sorry Mozilla!), and the
> annoyed girlfriend has become a gracious and supportive wife.

He then lists the seven types of mistakes /he/ reports on. I'll let you
go to the above link for the complete list.

The 2009 Correction of the Year is telling:

http://goo.gl/l2cWx
correction
Thursday, December 3, 2009
> A Nov. 26 article in the District edition of Local Living incorrectly
> said a Public Enemy song declared 9/11 a joke. The song refers to 911,
> the emergency phone number.

The list of 2010 most egregious errors and top corrections is here
http://goo.gl/axbWL

Here's the Apology of the Year from that piece--it does have a bit of a
Monty Python feel to it:

>     YESTERDAY, a news.com.au article incorrectly stated that the Star
>     Trek starship USS Enterprise-E, otherwise known as model
>     NNC-1701-E, was the successor to Captain Kirk's original USS
>     Enterprise.
>     It has since been brought to our attention that the NNC-1701-E in
>     fact came two models after Captain Kirk retired and was under the
>     command of Captain Jean Luc Picard.
>     User "Your Mum's Lunch" led the charge of those who correctly
>     pointed out that after losing the original Enterprise to the
>     Klingons, Captain Kirk was given the Excelsior Class Enterprise-B
>     as a stop-gap measure until the refit of the Enterprise-A was
>     completed.
>     Kirk's last ship was the Ambassador Class Enterprise-C.
>     Enterprise-D and Enterprise-E were in fact, the first of the
>     Galaxy Class models and were under the command of Captain Picard.
>     There were also some concerns about whether the incorrect use of
>     the term "hyperspace" in describing warp drive technology may harm
>     the original Star Trek concept, particularly the books.
>     News.com.au apologises unreservedly for the error.
>     There was no intention whatsoever to suggest Captain Kirk may have
>     commanded the Galaxy Class Starships Enterprise-D and Enterprise-E.
>     Any damage to the Star Trek brand incurred by the use of the term
>     "hyperspace" is regretful.
>     No malice was intended and a correction to the original article
>     will be made.
>     We also agree that Patrick Stewart is a handsome man, a sentiment
>     expressed by several readers.
>     Addendum -- We're also sorry for any errors in this apology.
>

The Typo of the Year from the same piece is a bit more subtle:

> This blog post originally stated that one in three black men who have
> sex with me is HIV positive. In fact, the statistic applies to black
> men who have sex with /men/.

Another was a Reuters error that involved a "Large Hardon Collider"--a
possible Cupertino, but likely just a result of editorial ignorance.

Also mentioned is Gawker's excellent observation:

> A previous post mistakenly claimed that "Nobody in America gives a
> shit about hockey." In fact, two people in America and one person in
> England give a shit about hockey.

Now, to 2011.

Silverman runs a list of ombudsmen's own picks of corrections of the year.

http://goo.gl/uBFKS

NYT's Greg Brock:

> [] nothing irritates me more than when we misspell someone's name.
> First, it's Journalism 101. (Phillips--one L or two?) Second, the
> person whose name we have misspelled (I'm speaking of regular
> folks--not public figures) most likely has never been mentioned in The
> Times--and never will be again. In 2011, we have misspelled almost 500
> given names or surnames. (And in a few instances, we have misspelled
> both!)

One correction apparently worked--or rather didn't--in both Dutch and
English:

> The most memorable correction I had to deal with--just a week ago, as
> it happens--involved a lot of misunderstandings.
> One of our journalists had written a piece in which he mentioned that
> a certain professor's position at his university was "not disputed"
> (in Dutch: "niet echt omstreden"). That was the phrase he
> intentionally chose and it appeared as such on paper. The article also
> appeared simultaneously on our website. There, a couple of readers
> found the phrase "not disputed" to be odd--they thought it was a
> mistake, they thought it should read "not indisputed" ("niet echt
> onomstreden") and signalled it as such via the "report a correction"
> button.

Readers were predictably wrong, corrections got uncorrected in different
editions and fun was had by all. The underlying point, however, should
not be lost on regular ADS-L'ers who've seen there share of overnegation
and negation reversal.

A couple of days ago, Silverman picked up another correction along a
familiar theme:

http://goo.gl/6RnRf
> After The Guardian published an article in May that referred to the
> Queen of England as a "woman," it received this email response from a
> reader:
>> The last sentence refers to the Queen using the word 'woman'.
>> Undoubtedly true, however I think 'lady' would be more appropriate.

And another old standby from a letter to the Guardian:

> I see that not only did Neanderthals have a better diet than we had
> previously thought, their grammar was so advanced it made their teeth
> rot: 'Starch participles found in Neanderthal dental plaque'.

This year's lineup of Corrections (etc.) of the Year was headlined by
the Obama/Osama typos.

http://goo.gl/FgWDq

But the runner-up was more interesting, if less persistent (the usual
single-letter drop):

 From the News-Herald of Willoughby, Ohio--a clock-reset PSA:

> THIS WEEKEND
> DON'T MISS THAT EXTRA HOUR OF SLEEP!
> Remember to turn your cocks back one hour at 2 a.m. Sunday.

Same idea, from the Canberra Times:

>     The article "Game on in Dickson’s twilight zone" (June 23, p4)
>     incorrectly reported the 2011 Canberra Roleplaying and Games
>     Festival Triptych theme as "immorality."
>     The theme was "immortality".
>

Also note the in-quote punctuation above (reproduced faithfully).

 From the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette (Note the last line, in
particular--no doubt, unintended):

> We are grateful to Alert (and scholarly) Reader who noted that we'd
> said something about Chaucer being written in Old English. Oh, dear.
> Dr. Clark, who taught us better so many years ago at Centenary
> College, would be disappointed in us. The textbooks say that Chaucer
> is really Middle English--not the Old English of, say, Beowulf. We
> apologize to A. Reader and hasten to correct our error. What a
> pleasure to have close readers. It can be an education in itself. And
> keep us straight, which is no easy task.

Oh, dear, indeed. But, to gayly march forward ...

The Gay & Lesbian Review:
> An editorial error crept into a passage in Jeff Mann's article on bear
> culture (Sept.-Oct. 2010). The offending sentence reads: "These
> proto-bears did not relate to the wellgroomed [sic] urban gay
> lifestyle; nor did they find in conventional masculinity many
> qualities worth preserving." It should end with: "they found in
> conventional masculinity many qualities worth preserving."

Here's something that appears on the page but Silverman does not highlight:

> The charges against Mr Rees were in fact abandoned on March 11, 2011,
> following a lengthy abuse of process argument.

The apology that contained this sentence might have been enhanced by a
couple of hyphens that would have made it clear that the argument was on
the abuse of process and not that the process had been abused.

Now, after all this, I'm coming back to San Ramon Express News piece
that started the ball rolling.

http://goo.gl/qxE5Q

> Sometimes the error is due to a reporter not hearing correctly. For
> instance, this in the Union Leader (Manchester, N.H.): "Due to a
> reporting error, a story on Page A2 in Saturday's edition of the New
> Hampshire Union Leader misquoted University of New Hampshire employee
> Bernardine Schultz. She said Professor John Collins was prone to
> giving students 'easy A's,' not that he had 'lazy aides.'"

The Guardian get hit again:

> The Guardian had this: "We misspelled the word misspelled twice, as
> mispelled, in the Corrections and clarifications column on September
> 26, page 30."

But the main reason for this entire error-filled harangue is left for last:

> The Chicago Tribune corrected a widespread urban myth: "An item in the
> Sunday Magazine referred to a popular but unfounded notion that
> Eskimos have dozens of words for snow, in this case 40. The item
> failed to note that the assertion has been debunked by linguists and
> others."

VS-)

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