Friday, September 26, 2014

Oops

When I was a stringer [that's a free-lancer for a newspaper who is brought in when needed to supplement the workforce and is usually paid by the word] I used to regularly cover the monthly meetings of a town's sewer board.  Yes, it was as exciting as it sounds.  The torpor was exacerbated by a board entirely staffed by anthropomorphic hot air balloons.

One time, in my bored inattention, I made an error in reporting.  I listed the name of a speaker at a public meeting incorrectly.  I think I wrote "Smolenski" instead of "Zolinski" or something like that.  The paper had to issue a correction and I was given an excoriating lecture by the editor about the importance of accuracy.

Needless to say, I was exceedingly careful about such things from that point forward.

I'm trying to imagine what happened to this NYT reporter:

Embedded image permalink