Regret the Error

Correction, with history lesson

An article on Thursday about the arraignment of three men in the shooting of two New York police officers, one of whom died, misstated the schedule set by a judge for a trial in the case. The trial is expected to begin by February, not by “Feb. 30.” The error occurred when an editor saw the symbol “— 30 —” typed at the bottom of the reporter’s article and combined it with the last word, “February.” It is actually a notation that journalists have used through the years to denote the end of an article. Although many no longer use it or even know what it means, some journalists continue to debate its origin. A popular theory is that it was a sign-off code developed by telegraph operators. Another tale is that reporters began signing their articles with “30” to demand a living wage of $30 per week. Most dictionaries still include the symbol in the definition of thirty, noting that it means “conclusion” or “end of a news story.” Link

Fuzzy numbers etc.

We said that Russia is claiming 1.2 square kilometres of oil and gas-rich Arctic sea floor around the North Pole . That should have been 1.2 million square kilometres. Link

Apocalyptic error

Toronto Police Chief Bill Blair did not say that budget cuts demanded of the police force would lead to apocalyptic scenarios on city streets as reported in a July 26 article.
Blair told an emergency police services board meeting that he would not engage in apocalyptic scenarios to demonstrate the implications of budget cuts. The Star regrets the error. Link

Respect for the dead

Orange County veteran Christopher Germain had been home from Iraq less than three months when he was killed in a car crash in 2005. He was not homeless, as a fact box indicated Thursday. Link

Hazardous map

Fire hazard graphic: A map in Thursday's California section showing fire hazard zones across the state and the Southland had the colors for the highest and lowest hazard levels reversed. In that map, red areas actually represented "moderate" hazard, not "very high," and the yellow areas represented "very high," not "moderate." Also, an accompanying chart should have indicated that the acreage listed was in thousands. A map with corrected shading is posted on The Times website at: \o7latimes.com/firehazard\f7. The fire hazard level of individual properties can be viewed on the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection website at: firecenter.berkeley.edu/fhsz/. Link

WedontspellourURLthatway.com

A picture caption on July 15 with an article about the intensifying public scrutiny of celebrities rendered incorrectly the name of the Web site from which a photograph of Nicole Richie was taken, and a correction in this space last Sunday crediting that Web site for another photograph, of Britney Spears, misstated the name of the Web site. The site is idontlikeyouinthatway.com. It is not idontlikeyouthatway.com (which is another celebrity site) or idon’tlikeyouinthatway.com. Link

Arizona Daily Star runs wrong photo of priest accused of sexual abuse

The wrong photo ran with the A1 story Friday about a new criminal investigation of a priest accused in civil suits of sexually abusing five former Tucson-area Catholic youth- group members in the 1980s. The photo was mislabeled in the Star's computer archive and is not of the Rev. Kevin Barmasse. Link

So who was the unlucky soul labeled as the accused? And why does an error of this magnitude only warrant a normal correction? Similar examples have resulted in major apologies, such as this one from the Ottawa Citizen. Though the Sarasota Herald-Tribune made the same type of error and also only ran a normal correction.

Fuzzy numbers etc.

Because of an editing error, an article in Business Day on Tuesday about Hewlett-Packard’s acquisition of two companies, Opsware and Neoware, misstated the value of an earlier acquisition of Mercury Interactive. It was $4.5 billion, not $4.5 million. Link

Resurrection

ACTRESS Lynn Frederick could not have been celebrating her 53rd birthday on July 25, as she died in April 1994. (Page 60, July 25) Link

The essence of People magazine, in two corrections

In our July 16 issue, we said Fragile X syndrome is a form of retardation often accompanied by autism. Fragile X is a genetic condition that causes a range of developmental problems, including learning disabilities, mental retardation and autism. In our July 2 issue, we said Rachel Hunter's boyfriend, Jarret Stoll, is nine years her junior. He is 12 years younger than Hunter. We regret these errors.