THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, June 16, 1996 TAG: 9606150012
SECTION: COMMENTARY PAGE: J5 EDITION: FINAL
COLUMN: REPORT TO READERS
SOURCE: Lynn Feigenbaum
LENGTH: 90 lines
Words of advice:
Always do your own math. Don't rely on another person's figures.
Always check a map when describing a site or route, even when you think you know the area.
Never disregard a question that has been raised, by someone else or by that voice in the back of your head.
Never assume anything.
Good tips for any employee or student, but a must for journalists. These four pointers were among a long list dished out to Virginian-Pilot writers, editors, photographers and page designers earlier this month at two days of accuracy seminars.
Giving the pointers was Frank Fee, a 30-year journalist who is now a doctoral student at the University of North Carolina. His sessions (attendance was compulsory) were a kickoff to a newspaperwide goal for improving accuracy - and decreasing the small mountain of corrections that runs on Page A2 and elsewhere in the paper.
Errors aren't just those pesky newspaper problems that jump out at you over your morning coffee - like describing a veterinarian as a dentist, transposing digits in a phone number and identifying the people in a black-and-white photo by the color of their clothes.
As Fee reminded us, accuracy goes well beyond that, into journalists' perceptions. ``We bring a lot of filters we don't know about to the job,'' he said.
The first that occurred to me were those common salvos - that the press is nothing but a bunch of tree-hugging, welfare-loving, military-bashing liberals. But Fee had something more basic in mind.
He asked each of us to define terms like ``elderly'' and ``middle-aged,'' ``short'' and ``tall.'' Our answers, as you might expect, were all over the place - and depended on how old or young, short or tall the respondent was.
What age is a senior citizen? At one gathering, the answers ranged from 52 to 75 years old.
What does ``recently'' mean? The answers: last week, last month, within memory.
Sometimes we err by context. The headline on Tuesday's front page was ``Girl arrested in N.C. church fire.'' It took a reader to point out that the woman in the photo right below the headline was not a suspect, as the juxtaposition implied, but the daughter of a minister who had been surveying the damage.
Other times we just forget to open the dictionary. Recently (as in this month), a story described a wedding consultant's husband as her ``cohort in cupidity.'' But ``cupidity'' means greed and avarice, not romance. Oops!
And so it goes. I still think we do a remarkable job at putting out reams of information each day on impossible deadlines with finite resources. But accuracy has been lost in the shuffle, as readers frequently remind us.
What can you all do to help? Just what you're doing now. Keep letting us know when the newspaper falls short - and when we're doing something right.
Everybody loves a festival, except maybe editors trying to cover them all for the newspaper.
A reader complained about The Pilot's ``excessively large amount of coverage'' last weekend of Harborfest, ``whereas two weekends before . . . there was no coverage whatsoever'' of the AFR'AM Fest in Norfolk and the Strawberry Festival in Pungo.
Another caller scolded us for ignoring the Ocean View Beach Festival earlier in May. ``My feeling,'' he said, ``is that your paper still has the same feelings toward Ocean View as you did during the 1940s.''
In fact, the newspaper had quite a bit about the AFR'AM and Strawberry festivals - both before and after, in stories and photos and listings.
However, the Ocean View caller had a point. A pre-festival story in the Compass section described it as the ``biggest beach party'' and gave a schedule. But there was no follow-up, no photo. That is an oversight.
Certainly, there's been a glut of good times. Competing last weekend with the Harborfest-Seawall festivals were the Home-style Music & Shrimp Festival and the Virginia Pork Festival.
This weekend, there's the Boardwalk International Arts Festival and the opening of the Virginia Marine Science Museum and a rodeo at Little Creek Amphibious Base. Next weekend is the Hampton Jazz Festival and the Bayou Boogaloo. And I've probably left out a bunch.
What's an editor to do?
``You have to make choices,'' said Roberta Vowell, who's in charge of entertainment coverage. ``We try to judge them by the amount of interest there is.''
Despite, or perhaps because of, this cornucopia of goodies, Vowell says the paper is beefing up its festival coverage. ``We want the paper to reflect where people in Hampton Roads are and what they're doing,'' she said.
By the way, Vowell was raised in Ocean View and says, ``No one could love Ocean View more than I.''
Mark it on your calendars for next year, folks.
MEMO: Call the public editor at 446-2475, or send a computer message to
lynn(AT)infi.net by CNB