Out-Of-Class #1: Yep, We Fataled

And the frustrating thing to me was that it was clear that the fatals came from the simplest of mistakes, and were ones where the most basic principles of fact-checking were not being followed. You know, the same old shit.

We fataled in a story when we used the formal title of Grand Valley State University University Counseling Center, and misspelled Counseling as Counselling, with two L's. Per the syllabus, any misspelling within a formal title is a fatal. 

We fataled when we spelled a source's name as Tom, when in fact it was Tim. Folks, we know by now what we're supposed to do about this. But we didn't do it.

In another instance, in a quote we said a part when we meant apart. And that's no small misspelling; it changes the meaning of the word apart (an adverb meaning, in pieces; to pieces; separately) to a part (a noun meaning, a portion, division or segment of a whole, a piece).

So, that misspelling not only is an automatic fatal since it was inside of a quote; it would have been a fatal as well outside of a quote, since it changes the meaning of whatever sentence it's in.

(And no, spell check would do us no good here, since the misspelled word created a correctly-spelled but unintended word. One more time: spell check is a supplement to -- but not a substitute for -- checking every noun, every statistical unit, every title, every location and every word of each and every quote with your own eyes.)

We fataled by referring to the grab-and-go food shops named Sparty's as Spartys, without an apostrophe. It's not the same; the formal name has an apostrophe in it. It's the same thing as misspelling someone's first or last name. For example, the name of the fast food restaurant chain is Wendy's, possessive; not Wendys, plural.

If an apostrophe is part of a formal name, taking it out isn't optional. If your name is O'Brien, it's never Obrien.

We also fataled by referring to Florene Taylor, when in fact her name is Florene McGlothian-Taylor. McGlothian isn't a middle name; it's part of her hyphenated last name. It would be like referring to 7-Eleven as just Eleven or Baskin-Robbins as just Robbins or Coca-Cola as just Cola.

That's five fatals on the out-of-classer. That's waaaaaay too many on this important of an assignment. Hell, one is too many.


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.

And it has nothing to do with talent, just vigilance. In the same way American 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.

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.
 
This job isn't about writing. It's about getting it right. I'm sorry some of you have to learn that lesson in a very harsh manner, because in this case we're not talking about a practice story that's worth not very much in terms of your final grade; we're dealing with an out-of-class story that's worth ten times as much.
 
The good news is, you have a rewrite. You have the opportunity to do a fourth out-of-class story, which will negate your worst-graded out-of-classer. You have other assignments. And I will offer a wide range of extra-credit opportunities that will do two things: prove to me that you can do all those little things right (along with the big things), and give you an opportunity to repair your grade and (hopefully) essentially make these fatals go away when it comes to your final grade.
 
But we have to start making sure we're following all the steps, every time. No more short cuts. No more assumptions.
 
Each and every one of you is capable of doing this, and doing it well. But we need to do all the things we're supposed to do for that to happen.