First Ledes: That Didn't Take Long

I'm sorry to say that with this assignment we had our first fatal fact errors, in which we offered inaccurate facts as defined by the syllabus.

And, in the interest of learning from each other this term, we will review most fatals so (hopefully) we can learn from the mistakes of others -- and avoid such mistakes ourselves, going forward.

Here's samples of the first bunch:

In one case, we identified the place doing the marriage study as the National Institute of Mental Health, when in fact it was the University of Florida. The NIMH paid U. of F. to do the study. (Two people fatales this way.)

Yes, that's a fatal. And yes, the vast majority of fatals are something simple and basic that was overlooked and/or misinterpreted.

Like day of the week. One of us wrote that the train-SUV crash happened this evening, when in fact it happened Monday. (Two people fatales this way.)

In another case, we wrote that a study looked at marriage distribution, when in fact it looked at marriage disruption. That, too, is a fatal, since distribution is not what the study considered.

(And this is an example of where spell check wouldn't have caught the mistake, because the unintended word is correctly spelled. This is why we need to use spell check as a supplement to -- but not a substitute for -- checking your story fact-by-fact with your own eyes, and checking against your notes -- or, in this case, against the information in your text.)

We get this idea that fatals are a HUGE error, but the reality is overwhelmingly fatals are simple mistakes. Like forgetting a word. That's why we urge such stringent fact-checking.

So please, be vigilant. After you finish writing be sure to double-check every name and age and title and date and, yes, city spellings.

No matter how well you did -- and the people who fataled did otherwise do well -- any fatal gets a 1.0 for the whole assignment. 

Seriously, it's that serious. Like I've said, journalism isn't about writing; it's about getting it right. Let's make sure we build good fact-checking habits so this is a rare circumstance.