Final Ledes: Lede And Let Die

Fatals? Yes. How to avoid 'em? Follow along:

1. Double-check dates! One of us wrote that the Constance Wei car crash happened this evening. In fact, the crash happened late Wednesday afternoon.

The facts given said the crash happened Wednesday, and at 5:37 p.m. (The date and time were posted in separate places). Evening is generally defined as the time between 6 p.m. and midnight.)

2. Double-check locations! Two of us wrote that the crash happened on Collins Avenue. In fact, the crash happened at the intersection of 29th Street and Melrose Avenue. Collins Avenue is where the victim resides. 

For those of you keeping score at home, six of 18 students in this class are now official members of The JRN 200 No-Fun-Fatals Club. We'll get tee shirts when we have more members.

Something that's important to note is that the three people who fataled this time around are three of the people performing pretty damn well sofar this semester. 


Early on in this class, I talked about how doing all the little routine things in journalism -- like thoroughly checking your work to make sure what you wrote was what you intended to write, and that it was accurate as compared to your notes and the facts -- was something that you could never take for granted. It's not.

Avoiding fatals has nothing to do with talent, just vigilance. In the same way America can have the best army in the world, it doesn't really matter if the one night the army takes the night off, Canada decides to invade us. Canada will kick our asses if we're snoozing,no matter how many nukes we have.

Or if we're trying to stay in shape, and instead of running our miles every day we start to cut corners and slack here and there. Eventually, the pounds will start showing.

The fact is, you could be the world's best journalist, and you still have to do all the little and annoying things -- like checking routine facts -- if you want to stay ahead of making mistakes. Because when you're processing thousands of words a day in a professional environment and on deadline, a mistake is always waiting to catch you at a lax moment and bite your ass.

It's why The New York Times has the best journalists in the world, yet they still have a copy desk.

So there's no big thing to learn from the fatals, other than if we want to do things the right way, we have to do things the right way completely and each and every time.

One more time: journalism isn't about writing; it's about getting it right. Let's not get into a hbit of taking short0cuts, because they will catch up to us. 

Take time before you start to write to make sure you understand the material, identify the key points and know how things went down. Take time after you finish writing to go over your story fact-by-fact -- and don';t simply run spell check! -- making sure what you wrote was what you intended to write AND is accurate.

Let's build some good habits here.