Speech: No Such Thing As A Small Mistake

Even the smallest gaffes in journalism matter. The audience is fair to ask, if they can't get the small things right, why should we believe they got the big things right?

So, there's no such thing as a small fatal.

Like in one of our stories, where within a quote we wrote that Izzo talked about "severing up new treats." What he actually said was, "serving up new treats" (italics mine).


That misspelling of serving creates a misquote. And a misquote is a fatal.

This is also an example of a spelling error that spell check won't catch, because the error creates a correctly-spelled but unintended word. After all, severing is spelled correctly, if we were trying to spell severing (which means, to cut up). Problem was,  we were trying to spell serving, as in, to deliver.

One more time: spell check is a supplement to -- but not a substitute for --  checking your story fact-by-fact, line-by-line, and quote-by-quote to ensure accuracy.


For those of you keeping score at home, of the 17 active members of this class, 16 are now members in good standing in the JRN 200 No-Fun Fact-Fatals Club. We can get club t-shirts made, if you'd like. 

So, it happens. Let's just be sure that we learn from it, and do a better job of proofreading going forward.