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Getting it right after you got it wrong
It’s deflating in a newsroom to hear we got something wrong in a story. Our policy is if it’s wrong, we’ll correct it. I have a correction running tomorrow for a column I edited.
It’s always a challenge to provide enough context for a correction without doing more damage by repeating the original error. And a correction for a correction? That’s the worst.
Our corrections, which typically run with a Getting It Right heading tend to be pretty straightforward. These corrections, in a Craig Silverman column for the Columbia Journalism Review, are much funnier.
Here’s a sample, correcting an error that was in a gossip column in the New York Post:
THE source who told us last week about Michelle Obama getting lobster and caviar delivered to her room at the Waldorf-Astoria must have been under the influence of a mind-altering drug. She was not even staying at the Waldorf. We regret the mistake, and our former source is going to regret it, too. Bread and water would be too good for such disinformation.
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