Kaitlyn Klein
Two corrections recently ran in the Papillion Times because of mistakes I made in my reporting.
Both errors involved people’s names. First I misidentified Andy Quick in my biggest story about where money on firework sales go. Quick called me a day after the article published to thank me for bringing his church’s problem to the public’s attention — “oh and you got my last name wrong,” he added as an after thought.
Mortified, I apologized and felt a sense of failure for forgetting to simply have him spell his name for me to ensure I got it right.
Quick laughed at the error and was way nicer to me than he needed to be. I was lucky.
A week later I felt a similar sense of dread when a source emailed me to say I misidentified another person in my story about Camp Maha. This time I went through every note I took on the story and couldn’t understand where I went wrong. It was Mark. Ranger Mark. Mark was all over my notes; I even had his business card. The cutline printed his name correctly and the story incorrectly identified him as Ranger Mike. I kicked myself for not noticing the inconsistency while I was copy editing.
But as I reflect I realize that I shouldn’t be so hard on myself or my fellow journalists for these errors. From now on I will be especially careful with names as I should’ve been to begin with. I admitted my mistakes and had corrections issued as soon as the errors were brought to my attention.
Errors should be rare, but not unforgivable. Publications and journalists should set up consistent fact-checking procedures and be willing to own up to their mistakes. I know I will take my mistakes and let them make me a better journalist and writer rather than letting them get me down.
Rock Chalk Media Hawk 