Why you can’t believe what you read in the D&C
I’ve always felt the credibility of a newspaper starts with its spelling and fact checking.
If it can’t get the basics correct, how can we trust the statements of nuanced situations or trust the vetting of the anonymous source?
Based on these criteria, our local fishwrapper, the Rochester Democrat and Chronicle never has rated very highly.
Take this Saturday’s paper – you can check the online version of the story by Joseph Spector (jspector@democratandchronicle.com) at http://www.democratandchronicle.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=2007707140321 and in hardcopy on page 1B of Saturday, July 14, 2007editon.
The second paragraph by Mr. Spector in the story on the Democrat’s search for a a county executive candidate reads:
“So has gone the Democrats’ search to find someone — anyone — to challenge Republican County Executive Maggie Brooks on Election Day, Nov. 13.â€
Ignore the sentence structure confusion; let us stick to just the facts.
Election Day is November 13th this year? Every schoolchild in America learns that Election Day is the ‘First Tuesday After a Monday’ in November! Don’t believe me? Check it out at http://aa.usno.navy.mil/faq/docs/holidays.html.
Perhaps such basic knowledge is too much to expect of a political reporter but didn’t an editor ever read this before it was printed?
The corrections in the Sunday, July 15th edition are now available. Perhaps the management would have caught the error and blamed it on an ‘editing error’ or typographic error. Of course, the 8 key on any keyboard is pretty far from the 1 and 3 keys, making anything but incompetence on someone’s part difficult to justify.
Sad to note there was no correction for this error.
Perhaps it will appear tomorrow or sometime later after someone on the their staff reads about it here.
As for Mr. Spector’s skills, if you are ever interviewed by him, ask to check his notes to see if your name is spelled correctly. But don’t count on him getting it right in print.
I’d cut Joe a break. Sure there is a typo, an error. I would challenge you to find repeated factual errors in Spector’s work. I’m not sure they are there.
Then again if the D&C actually allowed it reporters to focus on deep penetrating news reporting and all that - actually allowed a focused press to hold the public officials accountable - maybe even plowed some corporate profits into fairly compensating all its employees. Well then they could be on to something.
More the Newpaper Guide actions against the D&C here, here and here.
I’ve looked at the D&C this morning and no correction yet.
No surprise - if you look at the by-lines today in the A&B sections there are few local reporters represented and they seem to be all soft news features people.
As for Mr. Spector, I emailed him and the Editorial page yesterday with the correction request and have seen no response so far today.
I’m not holding my breath waiting, either. I’m pretty sure I’ve both found errors under his byline and reported it to him previously with not even a response acknowledging receipt.
Slack? Not knowing when is Election Day is pretty serious flaw in a political reporter’s skills. If an intern who worked for me was so inadequate to make the same mistake, they would be summarily fired.
At best Mr. Spector doesn’t fact check his own copy.
The editor who supervises Mr. Spector’s copy apparently didn’t find it.
No one on the D&C staff who read the Sunday paper apparently noticed it either as they would have had adequate time to get it in before today’s paper went to press.
If they eventually do publish a correction, I doubt I’ll believe their reasoning.
This is another case where the D&C needs a creditable Ombudsman to be the voice of the reader.
We need an independent voice to let us know what really goes on behind the security guards who control who gets to speak to a reporter at the front door of the Gannett fortress on Exchange Street.
Tuesday D&C corrections about names and a concert date wrong in Sundays paper.
No response from Mr. Spector although he does have a byline today on 1B.
Anyone know him that could ask why no correction and no response to email to him?