Errors and Omissions

Tallying the errors

A letter to the Public Editor from Pat Murphy, a newspaperman from Ketchum, Idaho, in yesterday's New York Times takes the newspaper to task for the number of corrections it publishes. "Reflect on the many major errors and the slipshod reporting that have been approved in the past few years, plus all the corrections The Times publishes," Murphy says. (Here's one of Murphy's commentaries for an Idaho newspaper.)

I've been thinking about this for the past couple of weeks. As I survey corrections pages, the Times seems to have more of them, on a daily basis, than any other. Was this perception correct? Is the number of corrections a fair measure of the quality of a newspaper?

We'll take a look at this, over the next several weeks. Who has the most corrections? Who has the least? Why the difference? Is it, as the letter-writer suggests, a culture of sloppiness and mistakes at the Times? Or are there other factors?

Stay tuned... by the way, tally of corrections in today's Times: 0.

newspapers, media, errors, New York Times

posted by Unknown @ 5/29/2006 08:37:00 AM