An apology to my readers for yesterday’s gigantic screw-up that will never, ever happen again
the real senator from Lithuania (Image via Wikipedia)
Yesterday I posted an especially embarrassing story that turned out to contain 19 errors, even though it was only 12 paragraphs long.
The story, which alleged that Sarah Palin was divorcing her husband, gave wrong dates for their marriage, misspelled the words “husband” and “divorce,” incorrectly identified Palin, who is actually former Republican governor of Alaska, as a Whig senator from Lithuania, and misstated the name of her husband, Todd Palin, as “Arthur V. Galbanian, Jr.” Also, they are not getting a divorce.
How could such egregious errors have occurred?
Here at Grossblogger, we have an elaborate fact-checking system but the ugly truth is that yesterday the system broke down. Sure, there was deadline pressure and a need to make up stuff that would get laughs, but that is no excuse.
The answer is that a writer with a long history of errors and confusion failed to double-check, or even single-check, his work, and the six editors and fact checkers responsible for standing ever vigilant on the ramparts of truth were at a neighborhood bar, totally smashed on apple-pie shooters.
They have all been subjected to a withering, obscenity-laced tirade that reduced several to tears and then ordered to send sincere-sounding group-e-mail apologies to the Palins, their children, our readers and Sergeant James Crowley of the Cambridge Police Department.
In hindsight, it is easy to see how small missteps and what seemed at the time like trivial errors of judgment could have built and built and built until they became a grotesque, festering mountain of lies, innuendo and deceit. But this is not tolerable. I have taken measures and implemented these measures to see that it never happens again. And if it does, I will take even more measures. That is my vow to you, the reader.
And I mean it.
Really.
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Yeah, I read the NYT column about the Cronkite obit, too. I absolutely love the idea that the Times keeps on staff, with salary and benefits, someone so error-prone she has had her very own private copy editor standing by to fix her errors.
Aaaaaah, professional standards.
Your piece about Iraq’s WMDs and those aluminum tubes was forgivable — but this! Sacrilege!
I’m very impressed that you’ve spelled “sacrilege,” a frequently misspelled word, correctly. Can I borrow your copy editor?
In response to another comment. See in context »If you misled us before, how can we be certain you’re not misleading us now about not misleading us again? And why does everyone keep going on and on about fact-checking? That implies there must first be facts so that they can be checked. Not to mention double-checked. With all the trying-to-save-newspapers going on and the complaining about information that’s, like, 97.9% right instead of the full 100%, do we really need this additional pressure?
You raise an important question and I intend no disrespect when I say that I’m going to ignore it.
In response to another comment. See in context »True/Slant has deadlines? Go know.
I think one of your editors mugged me last night. He stunk of booze and apple vineyards.
You have readers? Now this is news!