Chip Scanlan holds a column entitled, Chip on Your Shoulder on poytner.org. This column, http://www.poynter.org/column.asp?id=52&aid=134345, argues exactly the principle Dr. Keith has stressed for months; we all need an editor.





"Each misspelled word, bad apostrophe, garbled grammatical construction, weird cut line and mislabeled map erodes public confidence in a newspaper's ability to get anything right," a 1998 study commissioned by the American Society of Newspaper Editors concluded. "Even seemingly small errors feed public skepticism about a newspaper's credibility."

He introduces a freelance writer; Craig Silverman who believes it is best to expose the mistakes of journalists. He includes a link to Silverman’s site, which includes his new book, “ Regret the Error: How Media Mistakes Pollute and Imperil Free Speech.”

http://www.regrettheerror.com/newspapers/crunks-05-the-year-in-media-errors-and-corrections


The article includes a recent interview he held with the author:


Scanlan: What was the genesis of "Regret the Error"?

Silverman: It was a combination of wanting to start a media blog and noticing that corrections in particular were a fascinating and un-mined part of journalism. I came up with the idea of tracking errors and corrections early in 2004 and was inspired to move ahead after I saw this July correction from the Lexington Herald-Leader: "It has come to the editor's attention that the Herald-Leader neglected to cover the civil rights movement. We regret the omission." That told me there would be a lot to say about corrections and errors. So I launched in October 2004.

This site examines mistakes in several different mediums, year by year beginning with 2004. I definitely recommend taking a look at this site, and even checking out some of the links he includes. Here is one example:

http://www.stinkyjournalism.org/latest-journalism-news-updates-99.php

Are these sites beneficial to journalists to understand the importance of accuracy and fact checking, or are they further detriment to our profession?

As Silverman explains:

:There has been a lot of scholarly research aimed at discovering the level of error in U.S. newspapers... Overall, the research suggests that between 40 and 60 percent of newspaper news stories have some type of error, be it factual or something of a more subjective nature. So that's the frequency. But here's the other part of the equation: Research from Maier published this year found that only 2 percent of factual errors were corrected. So we have a relatively high error rate, and that is compounded by an anemic correction rate. Errors are not being prevented, and they are not being corrected.”

He goes on to acknowledge the impact and repercussion our society of bloggers can have in publishing these errors, that may go on to be cited in research or even used in press releases. This snowball effect he describes as, “ the errors of today become the errors of tomorrow…” He stresses, almost obsessively how important it is to take responsibility for our stories, and do everything we can to prevent or correct any error.

“A survey of newspaper readers by the ASNE found that over 60 percent of readers said they felt better when they saw corrections. They don't expect perfection; they expect us to work hard to prevent errors and to correct any that occur. When we don't do that, they punish us by tuning out.”

What do you think?