Like it or not, mistakes will happen

Nothing makes me cringe more than to read an edition of the Daily

Pilot fresh off the presses and stumble across an error -- a big

glaring boondoggle that causes me to reach for my jug of antacids.

Sometimes the error is big, like a misspelling in a headline and

sometimes it’s as small as a comma being out of place.

Sometimes it’s an error of omission, done by a young writer and

edited by a young editor, neither of whom has much institutional

knowledge of Newport-Mesa. Sometimes it’s a matter of not

double-checking facts.

My favorite was when one of our writers wrote an environmental

story on how the Upper Newport Bay empties into the Santa Ana River,

a geographic impossibility.

Then there was the time we had a photo caption that had the sun

setting in the north, which caused one crafty reader to call in and

say we just broke the biggest story of all time.

Very funny, but I’m telling you, it drives me crazy.

And I know it drives our readers crazy, also.

It’s not that I don’t make mistakes, I do and have and will

continue to.

The worst I ever made had to do with getting the wrong city in a

headline about a major university, whose football team, alumni and

fans were in town for the Rose Bowl.

I won’t get into details, but let me just say I got calls from as

far back as Ann Arbor, Mich., in which at least one person accused me

of either being below average intelligence or brain dead. Great

choices, eh?

But the message is that our readers expect us to be better than we

are sometimes. And I do too.

Often when the readers catch a mistake we’ve made, I’ll get a note

that reads something like: “Don’t you people have proofreaders over

there?”

This week, I want to give readers the answer to that question,

albeit in a long version. The following is the breakdown of at least

one portion of the newsroom that I hope will help readers better

understand the process we go through each and every day to put out

what we fondly call in the newspaper business “the daily miracle.”

THE REPORTING DESK

As you all know, the first line of defense in a newsroom is the

reporting staff.

They are the ones who gather the information, make the tough phone

calls, sit through long council or school board meetings and sift

through mounds of documents written by bureaucrats or police

officers.

The reporter’s job is to make enough sense out of a subject that

they may have no interest or knowledge in and then write the

equivalent of a two-page report on it, every day. Maybe twice or

three times a day.

We entrust the reporters to do their best to get a fair and

balanced report, to keep their biases out of stories and to make sure

no stone is unturned.

As you can imagine, that doesn’t always happen. Which is where

editors come in. And here at the Pilot, we have two levels of

editors.

THE CITY DESK

This is the next level. The city editor is really an assignment

editor. He or she supervises the reporters and gives them direction

on stories. Often this person is known as the content editor.

If a crash happens at John Wayne Airport or fire is crackling at

Talbert Park, the city editor is the one who usually sends the

reporter out to cover the action.

This editor will read the reporters’ stories first and ask if

there are questions that the story doesn’t answer or if the story is

fair to the subject matter involved and is balanced.

This editor usually has a fairly intimate knowledge of the topic

the reporter is writing on and may ask the reporter if he or she has

missed an angle or downplayed the significance of a certain point in

the story.

This editor also usually helps clean up the story in regard to

grammar, language and style.

The city editor is also the one who usually coordinates with the

photo department to determine which stories will be accompanied by a

photograph. He or she is the one who takes calls from readers and

public relations pros pitching story ideas all day long.

It’s a time-consuming and difficult job.

THE COPY DESK

This is the last line of defense. Beyond spelling, grammar and

punctuation, the copy editors also check the stories for balance and

objectivity and for libel.

These editors are mainly concerned with making sure the story

adheres to newspaper style and doesn’t contain any major grammatical

errors.

And this may surprise some of you, but the copy editors are the

ones who write most of the headlines.

There is a common misconception that the reporters write headlines

or that I, as the editor, write all of them.

Reporters write none of the headlines and I write very few.

Another function of the copy desk is the design and layout of the

page. After the story is copy-edited, it is sent to another editor to

layout.

And after the layout is done, the design editor prints out a page

proof and a copy editor then goes over the proof to check for errors.

Then, when the page is proofed and the errors are corrected, the

design editor sends the page off to the printing presses and then it

is printed, loaded on a truck and delivered to your doorstep.

And despite all of our hard work, it is possible that you may pick

up that paper off your doorstep, open the page and see a big glaring

error.

I hate it, though that’s just human nature I guess, and it will

probably never go away as long as humans put out newspapers.

But we have started a new program to combat errors and bring them

to a minimum. Stay tuned next week for details on our new error

policy.