The Devil Is in the Details

Hennessy-Fiske. Not Hennessey-Fiske. In a recent article about the Boylston Speaking Prize winners, The Crimson managed to misspell repeatedly the name of one of its own executive editors--a name which appears on the masthead, bylines and credits almost every day. The error highlighted by far the most common category of complaints against the Crimson: that of misspelling, misquoting and reporting of inaccurate facts.

These micro errors may seem trivial. In my first column two months ago, I tended to dismiss them as "the occasional expected slip-up in reporting and editing standards." Readers like Michael K. Titelbaum '99 took exception to this casual treatment. A fresh string of insidious errors seem to validate their concern that this sort of slip-up is less occasional than expected, and certainly more frequent than can be desired. Perhaps it is time to go beyond the perfunctory erratum and re-evaluate some of The Crimson's editorial policies to see whether institutional changes can be made to minimize these errors.

First, and perhaps easiest to write off as chance oversight, is the misspelling of names and titles. The Crimson's plea that it is impossible to be perfect under tight deadlines with volunteer reporting might seem to hold water. However, some cases are harder to excuse. James T.L. Grimmelmann '99 claims that his name has been misspelled repeatedly over the years. He has brought it to the editors' attention before, but it happened yet again in the Goldwater Scholarship article on April 3, even after he specifically emphasized the second "n" in his last name to the reporter. Similarly, friends and well-wishers of Rosemary C. She '98 had to mount a barrage of letters to point out that She was the captain of the women's tennis team, and not the co-captain, as had been reported time and again on the sports page. And then, of course, there is Hennessy-Fiske.

While the error is a small one, nothing turns off readers as much as having their names distorted in a public forum. A simple editorial policy of checking all names and class years against the student directory would solve the problem. At present, such checking is done only for names "that are likely to be misspelled," explains Managing Editor Andrew S. Chang '99.

A number of readers like Titelbaum and Peter S. Manasantivongs '99 complain that repeated misquoting and misreporting of facts has made them wary of talking to Crimson reporters at all. Hasty editing and headlining also lead to complaints of mischaracterization. Most recently, Frankfurter Professor of Law Alan M. Dershowitz pointed out that a story in which he denied representing Radovan Karadzic ran with the headline "Dershowitz May Defend Serb Leader Karadzic." The story also omitted Dershowitz's caveat that he had not spoken with Karadzic in a year. As a result, the "entire thrust of the story was wrong," complained Dershowitz.

Samuel Klein '99, who is a regular reader of The Crimson, suggests that one way to prevent inaccurate facts and quotes from creeping in is to have at least one editor who knows something about the subject matter read the article. At present, most daily stories are edited by the night editors who happen to be there. These editors are seen solely as part of the production process and are not there to "provide suggestions or insight about pieces of writing," Klein points out. In some cases, anyone with a minimal background in the subject area could have prevented the errors.

Crimson executives respond that they do have executive editors who are assigned to specific beats like Science and Technology, City, College, Student Life or Faculty. However, only features are regularly edited by these beat editors. For daily stories, Chang says, "we have to work under extremely tight deadlines, and we just don't have the luxury of a publication with a longer production cycle." For example, if a speech event takes place at eight o'clock and the paper has to go to press in a matter of hours, then there is often no time to check all the facts the speaker might have thrown out. As for quotations, the current policy is to try and confirm quotes by reading them back to the speaker "on matters that are highly sensitive, or if the reporter is not sure about the quote" says Chang. He estimates that this happens about 50 percent of the time.

Two suggestions: first, most factual errors do seem to occur in the front-page daily stories. The features are uniformly better edited and less problematic. Surely, it cannot be that difficult to ensure that at least one editor from every beat is on duty on any given night. Then the daily stories, too, could be edited by someone who knows something about the subject matter. It would also ensure a modicum of consistency in editorial policy. Secondly, confirming quotations should be made a blanket policy in all cases. If extending this courtesy in 50 percent more cases would cut down on 100 percent of the complaints, surely the extra trouble would be worthwhile.

The Crimson is a student-run volunteer newspaper, and these are the seemingly small errors which tend to get glossed over. Chang says, "We think we take the adequate measures to ensure that these errors don't happen more often. Even the Globe runs a couple of corrections every day. We put in more checkpoints than professional papers, because we have to." But too many small errors are adding up to big doubts about the credibility of the newspaper. And credibility is the biggest asset a newspaper can have. If a little more rigor, and perhaps even more checkpoints in editorial and reporting policies, will reassure readers about the accuracy, integrity and sound judgement of what they read every morning, it will be a step well worth taking.

Kaustuv Sen '99 is an economics concentrator in Eliot House. Questions, complaints and concerns should be sent to readerrep@www.thecrimson.harvard.edu.