As of the beginning of last week, The Post had a backlog of hundreds of
correction requests, a few dating to 2004. In many cases, readers never
heard whether The Post had rejected their request, or why. For them, it
was like sending a correction request into a black hole.
The newspaper’s process for handling correction requests has not
worked properly. In some instances, reporters were never even notified
that readers had requested corrections to their stories.
There is little statistical analysis to spot trends in errors or to
detect reporters (or editors) with high correction rates. As the saying
goes, what gets measured gets fixed.
This is whythe stylebook argument is bullshit. It’s why canting about how bloggers have no standards is really, really bullshit. The standards are different everywhere. It works differently everywhere. The way I used to do corrections was that somebody would call me up screaming about something I’d screwed up, and I’d have to go to my editor and tell him I’d screwed up, and then write the damn correction myself. It’s why I remember all of them word for fucking word. God, I hated writing corrections. I’d give anything not to even know about them.
A.