Another corrections tally to add to the pile for 2005. This one is from the San Diego Union-Tribune:
Now I know why I put off doing it. When I finally tallied the total for corrections and clarifications that appeared in The San Diego Union-Tribune in 2005, I groaned. The figure for news, features, business and sports totaled 709, the highest in the six years I've been keeping track of “For the Record” entries. It's an increase of 19 corrections and clarifications – or about 2.7 percent – over last year. It's not huge, but we broke the 700 mark, and that's of concern. Add the 50 corrections that appeared in the Opinion pages for columns, letters and editorials, and you get the picture.
We like this paragraph:
While some errors have been major, a majority of them have been relatively minor. How you see a mistake, however, depends on who you are and how it affects you. If it was your name that was misspelled or if the wrong time was printed for an event you were planning to attend, you might not think the error so minor. The same is true if you or a cause dear to you were presented in the wrong light. What's frustrating about mistakes is that so many of them are avoidable.
And here's a nice round-up of some other paper's tallies from last year (check our other post about 2005 totals here):
Some of my colleagues at other newspapers do similar surveys each year. Errors cited typically are in the hundreds, leading me to wonder if all the corrections printed in newspapers in a single year were laid end to end, would the resulting line of type circle the Earth? Some newspapers exceeded the Union-Tribune's total. The Boston Globe tallied more than 1,000 corrections; the Oregonian total dropped to 800; the Orlando Sentinel had 779. Others had fewer, including the Star Tribune in Minneapolis with 611; The Kansas City Star with 482, and the Akron Beacon-Journal with 450...
