What would a post about corrections be without more corrections? On Monday I wrote that The Boston Globe had finally started posting corrections on its website instead of simply appending them to the original articles (not that that’s not important too). By the end of the day, though, former Globe digital guy Joel Abrams had tweeted that, in fact, it was nothing new:
@alangmead @dankennedy_nu There are many instances of the Globe doing that and publishing that item from the paper. https://t.co/WOU5kE2JW3
— Joel Abrams 🍵 (@BostonAbrams) March 23, 2015
But wait! It turns out that though Monday wasn’t the first time the Globe had published a separate corrections item on its website, it still hasn’t managed to do so consistently. For instance, if you look at the print edition of March 12, you’ll find three corrections — but nothing if you go to the Today’s Paper section of BostonGlobe.com for the same date.
I can’t think of a newspaper that gets online corrections exactly right. For instance, The New York Times runs corrections on its website, but they don’t appear in its iOS apps. The print edition of The Washington Post today includes four corrections, but they don’t seem to be online.
It’s time for newspapers to start getting corrections correct.
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Newspaper media malpractice is nothing new.
Dan
As a regular thorn in the Globe’s side, I have frequently prompted published corrections of errors of fact. I am not persuaded that better/different approaches to on-line corrections is any substitute for printing the correction in the hard copy edition as has recently been the case.
On-line and hard copy audiences are quite distinct.