THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, March 5, 1995 TAG: 9503030002
SECTION: COMMENTARY PAGE: J5 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: LYNN FEIGENBAUM
LENGTH: Medium: 87 lines
IDs reversed for a Television Week cover photo; the wrong day on the Ledger-Star's front page; a mayor misquoted.
Anyone who reads the corrections on page A2 knows they run the gamut. Often, there's a story behind these errors that a simple correction doesn't begin to tell.
For one thing, there was nothing wrong with the green-sheet TV caption. The names were in the correct order - it was the faces that were backwards. The color photo had been ``flopped.''
A more troublesome example was the correction that ran Wednesday on a two-paragraph Metro brief, ``Man sentenced on DUI charge.''
The story involved the same man arrested January in a highly publicized high-speed police chase, the one that ended in a crash and two deaths in downtown Norfolk.
The newspaper pursued that story aggressively, raising questions like: Does local police policy on such chases needs re-examination?
That line of inquiry displeased some police and readers alike. The police were doing their job, they said; focus instead on DUI-related fatalities.
It was a sore spot that got a bit sorer with Tuesday's Metro brief, about a sentencing for an earlier DUI conviction involving the pursuit suspect. Less than 2 inches long, the brief had two errors and several key omissions.
Police were understandably irked. All those inches of stories questioning pursuit policy, yet no VP-LS reporter was at the hearing, said a police spokesman.
He was right, the story had fallen through the cracks. A second, more detailed account ran the next day but we had to plead guilty on the first.
A cut-and-dried correction? Hardly.
Schools & integration. Some mistakes are never formally corrected. They may be too complex, too late, too minor, too hard to pin down.
One errant piece of history that defied a quick fix came from a story last Sunday about the integration of high school sports. Referring to Norfolk in the late '50s, it said: ``The affected schools fought back. Rather than submit to integration, they closed.''
Not quite, said Tony Stein, a retired reporter who covered federal courts for The Ledger-Star back then.
Saying that ``implies that the schools decided to close and that they favored segregation,'' said Stein. ``It was state policy, Massive Resistance, that determined when schools would close - not individual schools.''
Harriett Gutterman, a retired teacher, also didn't think another comment - ``White kids went to private schools'' - told the whole story.
``The students didn't just go to private schools,'' said Gutterman, who taught then at Oscar Smith High in South Norfolk, now Chespeake. She remembers her school taking in Norfolk students.``They met for classes in garages, churches and synagogues, other public schools nights and holidays.''
Now, how could I say all that in a little correction box?
The buzz on birds. Sometimes reader corrections are for the birds - vultures, specifically.
Last weekend, the Sunday Break featured a story about the turkey vultures plaguing the town of South Boston, Va. The story and headlines also called them buzzards.
Reader Betsey Abbey's feathers were ruffled. Vultures and buzzards are not the same, said Abbey, a member of the Audubon Society, Cape Henry chapter. She explained that the buzzard, genus buteo, is a European bird of prey while vultures are North American scavengers.
Abbey cited another avian misnomer. When the Pilgrims arrived in North America and saw a bird with a red breast, they dubbed it a robin. But, said Abbey, the American robin is actually a member of the thrush family; the European robin is more like a warbler, smaller and more musical.
I asked Earl Swift about all this, since he wrote the Sunday Break story, and he stands by his vulturine buzzards. After all, said Swift, times change. Should we call a robin a ``red-breasted thrush''?
Besides, my Webster's defines ``buzzard'' as a turkey vulture.
TIBBS LEAVES PAPER. A few readers have noticed a gap in the paper - Marc Tibbs' MetroNews column.
Tibbs was on vacation for two weeks and, during that period, decided to make it permanent. He resigned last week.
``Marc's family lives in Northern Virginia, and he has been spending much of his life on the road between Hampton Roads and home,'' deputy managing editor Rosemary Goudreau explained. ``Now, because of family concerns, Marc wants to spend more time at home.''
Two readers said they hope the newspaper will continue presenting a column ``from the perspective of the African-American community.'' No decision has been made yet on the columnist position.
by CNB