In the course of our weekly news cycle here at the Leader, we churn through literally thousands of pieces of information. They come in via phone calls, mail, emails or posts to our website, Facebook or Twitter. Some bits may be overheard at a child’s dance class or soccer practice, some might come from a chat with an old friend in the dentist’s waiting room.
These bits of information are entered into the computer and shared in internal emails. Sometimes they’re passed from hand to hand, hurriedly scribbled on scraps of paper. Sometimes they’re hollered across the room over the chaos of a busy Monday.
And it’s always busy, always rushed, because we are always on deadline.
We are a small staff, and we all wear many different hats. It is, unfortunately, inevitable that we will make mistakes sometimes, despite our best efforts. We read and re-read our own work; it gets scrutinized by an editor, gone over with a practiced eye by our proofreader, and still the odd error gets through.
Sometimes it’s something silly, like the photo we ran a few weeks ago of a hippopotamus that we blithely pronounced to be a rhinoceros.
Sometimes it’s something funny but embarrassing. In a story I wrote about firefighters working 48-hour stretches of time, I made the world’s worst typo on the word “shifts.” (You figure it out.)
Sometimes it’s something aggravating. We had several cases of getting the spouse’s name wrong in items submitted to us online before we figured out it was a glitch in our website programming.
Sometimes, unfortunately, we make mistakes that are far more serious.
We have inadvertently listed as deceased people who are very much still alive, and we have occasionally brought back to life those long gone. We’ve made other kinds of mistakes, some of which have caused our readers heartache.
Most times, our customers are incredibly gracious about it, thankfully. But that doesn’t take away the guilt and sorrow I feel when I commit one of those glaring errors. I always feel like the world’s biggest loser. I’d give anything to be able to go back and change it, but there it remains, 75,000 copies strong.
The bright spot in this scenario, though, is the incredible vigilance of our readers. My most recent error wasn’t in circulation two minutes before we got a call. The hippo misidentification one was just as quick, with readers calling, posting and even writing letters to the editor to draw attention to that mistake.
Now, we could take offense at this intense scrutiny. We could bluster at our readers, saying, “Well, dagnabbit, why don’t you compliment us on the 10,000 facts we got right in last week’s issue?”
But what’s that old saying about “that which doesn’t kill us only makes us stronger?”
We are better for having such vigilant readers. You all never let us get away with anything less than our best effort, and that is good for all of us.
We’re a better news organization, and the community is better informed, when the No. 1 priority is to get it right. (And believe me, that sometimes flies in the face with the current media passion for getting it first.)
We get all kinds of calls asking why we don’t have a certain story in our paper or on our website, since Channel Blah de Blah already has it on theirs?
We smile politely through gritted teeth and thank the caller for bringing it to our attention, not bothering to explain that yeah, we’ve known about it for days but can’t get the official report from the police, and we’re not about to print an unverified story or an unsubstantiated rumor.
I sometimes wish readers could be a little mousie in the corner on deadline day, hearing the lengths we sometime go to track down correct information.
We make phone calls, we pore over press releases, we visit websites, we check social media posts, we look up back articles for earlier info. Sometimes we resort to calling the brother-in-law who works with the guy who dates the girl who lives next door to the person we can’t get hold of, using the old-fashioned gossip network to find a working phone number or email.
Despite all our efforts, though, Murphy’s Law prevails, and mistakes get made.
Guys, we’re trying our best.
We have a phenomenally dedicated staff here at the Leader. But, smart and committed as we are, I suspect we’re going to keep making the odd boo-boo, no matter how hard we try.
That’s why it’s a good thing we have you, Dear Readers, to keep our noses pointed in the right direction.
Thanks, guys. We appreciate you.
Keep on keeping an eye on us.
