When sorry is not the hardest word

Did you see it? Probably not. It was one of those small items in the newspaper that might not catch your eye unless you had a personal interest in the story.

A headline in Tuesday’s California section of the Los Angeles Times caught my eye. “Costa Mesa City Attorney to Pay Fine for DUI,” the headline read. Yikes. That’ll get your attention by the dawn’s early light, especially if you’re the Costa Mesa City Attorney. There was only little teensy weensy itsy bitsy problem though. It wasn’t true.

The body of the story, which was accurate to the core, reported that Jennifer McGrath, the city attorney of Huntington Beach, had pleaded guilty to driving under the influence and would be required to pay a fine. Whoever wrote the headline apparently got their cities confused, but it was a journalistically awkward moment. What’s a newspaper to do, especially one of the stature of the Los Angeles Times? Print a correction, that’s what, which the Times did, in their For the Record section the next day.

I have to be honest with you. I love corrections. I’m okay with raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens, but newspaper corrections are definitely a few of my favorite things. They’re not intended to be funny but they often are -- a quirk that any fan of the New Yorker magazine knows well. The New Yorker has a long tradition of sprinkling “newsbreaks” here and there -- corrections and announcements that have run in everything from the New York Times to church newsletters -- tossed onto a page for no reason and without a word of explanation.

My mouse and I nosed around a bit and found more than a few examples that we’d be glad to share, like this one, from the Coos County Democrat in Hampshire: “In last week’s Democrat, some words were transposed through a typesetting error. The paragraph that began, ‘Occasionally circus elephants spent ninety-five percent of their lives chained by two legs ?’ should have read, ‘A majority of circus elephants ?’ while the paragraph that began, ‘A majority of circus elephants go mad ?’ should have read, ‘Occasionally circus elephants ?.’’ Oh, okay. Can we go back to “The paragraph that began...?” I lost track of which elephants were which after that.

This one is from a trade publication called Business Insurance: “The following corrects errors in the July 17 geographical agent and broker listing: Aberdeen is in Scotland, not Saudi Arabia; Antwerp is in Belgium, not Barbados; Belfast is in Northern Ireland, not Nigeria; Cardiff is in Wales, not Vietnam; Helinski is in Finland, not Fiji; Moscow is in Russia, not Qatar.” Those are all pretty impressive, but could the copywriter who thought Belfast was in Nigeria please raise their hand?

Geography also took a bite out of the Herald-Times in Bloominton, Indiana: “Sunday’s Lifestyle story about Buddhism should have stated that Siddartha Gautama grew up in Northern India, not northern Indiana.” India, Indiana -- do we have to argue over two letters?

Math is also a constant battle, as in this correction from the Financial Times: “Tchibo, the German coffee shop operator featured in the February 13 issue of FT Digital Business, has 1,000 outlets, not 100,000.” The New York Times had a fascinating miscalculation of its own: “An article about Ivana Trump and her spending habits misstated the number of bras she buys. It is two dozen black, two dozen beige, and two dozen white, not two thousand of each.” Got it, but even two dozen of each is nothing to sneeze at. When you have a chance, could you get back to Ivana and ask her what she does with them?

Spelling is no piece of cake either, according to this correction from the Atlanta Journal-Constitution: “President George Washington’s first name was misspelled in an editorial in Monday’s At Issue section.” Shoot. Like misspelling his last name wouldn’t have been embarrassing enough.

Sometimes people send in their own corrections, like this one from a British Member of Parliament named Kate Hoey to the Daily Telegraph in Sydney: “Sir: In their interview with me (News, February 17), Alice Thomson and Rachel Sylvester say that I was wearing, ‘a Gucci watch and a jacket trimmed with fake fur.’ The fur was real. The Gucci watch was fake.” Hmm. Are you sure we needed to correct that?

Be careful what you cook, especially if the recipe is from the Sacramento Bee: “In Wednesday’s Taste section, a Washington Post recipe on Page F7 included an incorrect cooking time for carbonada (braised beef with onions and red wine). The dish should be cooked for 2 1/2 hours, not 10 to 20 minutes.” I thought it looked a little rare.

Most corrections end with something like, “We regret the error,” or, “We apologize for the mistake,” but this one, from The Herald in Titusville, Pennsylvania, was refreshingly honest: “Just to keep the record straight, it was Whistler’s Mother, not Hitler’s mother, that was exhibited at the recent meeting of the Pleasantville Methodists. There is nothing to be gained in trying to explain how the error occurred.” Enough said. Appreciate your honesty. We won’t bring it up again.

I would steer clear of the Methodists for a while though. Sometimes, the corrections need corrections, like this one in the Carlsbad, New Mexico Current-Argus: “Tuesday’s edition called a charge residents pay for 911 service a ‘surge charge’. It is, of course, a sir charge.” Of course.

Finally, one little word can make all the difference in the world, like this one from The New York Times: “A book review ? quoted a passage from the book incorrectly. It says, ‘Your goal should be to help your daughter become a sexually healthy adult’, not ‘a sexually active, healthy adult.’” Actually, bud, I’m not sure either of those is any of your business.

So that’s it then. Watch what you say, read what you write, and if you make a mistake, bury it. It’s safer. I gotta go.

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