Errors and Omissions

Corrections tally - wrap-up

We looked at corrections from eighteen newspapers over a six-day period. We counted them. This was not a scientific test, nor did we try to analyze the types of corrections made. Simply totaled them up.

The Top 3:

New York Times 46
Los Angeles Times 31
Wall Street Journal 19

The Bottom 3:

Dallas Morning News 0
Washington Times 0
New Orleans Times-Picayune, Austin American-Statesman (tie) 4

And some observations:

• The papers with the most corrections also had the most original content.
• The papers with the most corrections also had the most aggressive policies toward identifying and addressing errors in the paper (see prior post on the San Francisco Chronicle, which finished fourth in this tally)
• And, finally, there are too many dumb mistakes in all the papers (I'd wager that the Dallas Morning News and Washington Times don't look hard enough to find them). The time pressure of web publishing has had an impact, I'm sure. But there's a lot to be said for several careful reviews of drafts, Google searches to corroborate basic information, etc.

newspapers, media, errors

posted by Unknown @ 6/05/2006 08:57:00 AM