In this July 26, 2010 photo, a 25-foot sculpture based on Grant Wood's "American Gothic" painting towers over the Dow AgroSciences Celebration Park at the Indiana State Fairgrounds in Indianapolis.
We strive for perfection every day. But with thousands and thousands of words, numbers and graphics etc. published every day, errors unfortunately slip in despite the best efforts of reporters and editors.
Newspapers have a long tradition of correcting those errors and of not being ashamed to admit that we are less than perfect on a daily basis.
That doesn't mean that those who have made a mistake don't feel completely mortified by their error. They do.
We often find out about the errors from our readers, as well as from the subjects of the stories or from our own staff. When that happens, we fix them for the paper and online. For the paper, our policy is this: "All significant factual errors should be corrected in stories, graphics, headlines, captions, photographs and other elements that appear in our newspaper, magazines and on the Web. The aim is for consistency and transparency across the company and a process that lets us publish our corrections as quickly as possible."
For the web, our policy is: "Stories that are posted throughout the day will be corrected immediately after an error has been found. Stories that are part of the newspaper archive will have a correction appended as soon as the correction is approved. We should not wait until the correction appears in the newspaper before ensuring that versions posted on the live website are updated."
This past weekend, we heard from a number of you who pointed out errors of name, title and more.
One correction said Lloyd Axworthy is the president of the University of Winnipeg. The story said it was the University of Manitoba.
Another correction named Gillian Guess as having an affair with an accused when she was a juror. (The story include a typo and had her name as Gilligan.)
More of you wrote in about two other errors. On the Saturday Arts front, we had a historic look at the art of Norman Rockwell who moved from a very sunny view of small-town Americana to ugly depictions of racism in that same place. The trouble was that our display copy called him the artist behind American Gothic, when that is really Grant Wood.
Then, there was the weather. To those who caught it, we ran the same weather forecast in Friday's paper and Saturday's paper due to a production error. One reader demanded we run a public apology for this "gross error." We are very sorry this happened because we know many of you count on us for an accurate weather chart.
Another reader had a bit of fun in his note to us. He wrote of the Saturday paper: " Many editorial items had a distinctively 'retro' feel:
- the hammer and sickle signet ring prominently placed on a diabolical image of PM Vlad Putin.
- Air Canada air crew and aircraft in Dirty Thirties tenue.
- an entire half-page (bottom of Page A18) predicting the world-wide weather for Friday 2 March 2012. I don’t mind nostalgia, but...”
So, thank you to all of our readers who notice errors and take the time to call or e-mail. We appreciate it greatly. And we will continue to strive to do better.
Please comment below or e-mail me at publiceditor@globeandmail.com
Sylvia Stead