Tag: corrections

If I’m not mistaken, today marks the debut of a freestanding correction section on The Boston Globe’s website. The move is long overdue; nearly two years ago I wrote about the shortcomings of online corrections in both the Globe and The New York Times.

Though the Globe appends online corrections to the original articles, it had not up until now run them separately, as it does in the print edition. That was fine for archival purposes. But if you simply read the paper online every day, you had no way of knowing whether something had later been corrected.

In any event — kudos.

Correction: This is a whole lot more complicated than I had first thought. See my follow-up.

The Boston Globe published two corrections today. No big deal. It’s one of the ways that responsible news organizations hold themselves accountable.

But unless you read the print edition, you didn’t see the corrections — not even in the “Today’s Paper” view, which is supposed to include every item published in that day’s Globe. (Of course, corrections do appear in the ePaper, which is how I grabbed the image accompanying this post. But that’s just a PDF of the print edition.)

As someone who reads the Globe and The New York Times every day, I find myself scratching my head at how poorly the two papers handle corrections online. The Globe is worse, but the Times needs to improve, too.

The Times, at least, runs all corrections on its website and in the “Today’s Paper” section of its iPad-only HTML5 app. But they are missing from the iOS apps for the iPhone and the iPad, which are used by many of their customers. They’re also missing from Times Skimmer, an alternative desktop view based on the same feeds as the iOS apps. (I’m guessing the situation is the same with the Times’ Android apps.)

Unlike the Times, the Globe doesn’t run a separate section of online corrections anywhere — not on its website and not on its recently released iPhone app. When I posted a question on Twitter yesterday, Globe tech guy Damon Kiesow directed me to this. But it hasn’t been updated since April 4. In a follow-up, Kiesow indicated it would be fixed at some point.

I should note that both the Times and the Globe append corrections to online stories as necessary. That’s essential for archival purposes. But it doesn’t help if you read a story just once, on the day it’s published.

In any event, it’s long past time for both papers — and all papers — to take corrections as seriously in the digital space as they do in print.

More: Not long after this item was posted, New York Times public editor Margaret Sullivan tweeted:

Thoughtful piece by @dankennedy_nu on how online corrections should be handled: http://t.co/9XMNgNvCn7

— Margaret Sullivan (@Sulliview) July 11, 2013

Also, in the comments I’ve posted an email from Globe spokeswoman Ellen Clegg, who says my post “mischaracterizes” the Globe’s correction policy. I don’t think that’s the case, but I’m happy to offer a different perspective.