The Times had announced that it was cutting the width of its page size to save on newsprint costs and that all printing would be consolidated in one printing plant with the loss of about 250 jobs.

Now, unfortunately we never got to see the original story that Reuters wrote on the subject, but we did get to see the correction and it’s a doozy, which we print below.

ftm background

The Newsweek Debacle: Whatever Happened to the Rule That Before Something Got Printed It Had Two Reliable Named Sources?
Ever since the global revulsion to the Abu Ghraib prison scandal in Iraq the media has been aware that particularly in the Moslem world they take their religion and customs very seriously, and when American wrongdoing towards Moslems is uncovered it’s going to cause very serious consequences. That doesn’t mean that such events should not be reported, but it does mean extra care needs to be taken to ensure such reporting is correct.

The Shot by General Motors Across the Bow of the LA Times Is a Shot Heard Around the World
No Matter the Final Outcome the Damage Is Already Done.

It’s Not Every Day A Swiss Newspaper Prints A Story Confirming CIA Secret European Prisons and Says Damn the Consequences, and Its Not Every Day That The Swiss Army’s Prosecutor And The Attorney General Open Separate Leak Investigations That Could Cost An Editor and Two Reporters Up To Five Years in Prison
The big story in Europe before Christmas was that the CIA operated clandestine prisons in eight European countries where it was questioning Al-Qaeda suspects and secretly flew the prisoners through European air space. Condoleezza Rice basically confirmed to European governments there had been clandestine flights, but “What prisons?” and the host governments named said, “No way.”

One just wishes one could have been the fly on the wall when The Times rang Reuters to complain about the first version.

We don’t know if that first version actually made it to The Times’ web site but by deduction one has to figure that it did, otherwise why make all the noise about the correction and instead just run the corrected version. So it would also have been kinda neat to have been the fly on the wall when Arthur (Sulzberger) and Janet (Robinson) read the original Reuters story on their own web site and their reaction thereon, let alone Bill’s (Keller).

And if the story is about The Times then why didn’t The Times run a story written by itself about reducing its page width. There’s no hard and fast rule about that, but usually publications tend to run stories written by others about their own internal affairs so readers will not think there is any prejudice in a story. But again there have been plenty of stories about the New York Times this year and the paper has covered itself in many stories, as they eventually did with this one.

Incidentally a Reuters editor once told this writer that the one story Reuter journalists in London hate to be assigned more than any other is coverage of their own company’s financial results. “The feeling of absolute panic cannot be underestimated,” the editor said. Reuters has an editorial policy of two sets of eyes – the journalist writing the story and then someone else reading the copy to catch any mistakes the writer missed – but for stories about itself there are countless pairs of eyes peering over the screen.

Even so, truth be told, even that hasn’t prevented the need for corrections from time to time on that all-important in-house story. And one can just imagine the next day’s “Daily Prayers” (editorial meeting) when they would discuss such corrections.

July 18, 2006

CORRECTED: New York Times to Cut Paper Size, Close Plant

By REUTERS

Filed at 8:47 a.m. ET

Corrects number of job losses in first paragraph; removes reference to 800 job losses in second paragraph.

NEW YORK (Reuters) - The New York Times Co. plans to make the size of its flagship newspaper narrower and close a printing plant, resulting in the loss of 250 jobs, the company said in a story posted on its Web site late on Monday.

There Are Corrections, And Then There Are Corrections

It’s not nice to poke fun at others when they have made a mistake but a correction on the New York Times web site by Reuters on its story about the New York Times just can’t be passed up.

CORRECTED: New York Times to Cut Paper Size, Close Plant