The Times Op-Ed: To survive, newspapers will have to learn the era of their ways
By David Rowan
We newspaper hacks have been deluding ourselves. Outblogged by teen "citizen journalists", outpaced by 24-hour celebrity-wrestling channels, no amounts of DVD giveaways can keep us relevant into 2006. If papers are to survive, we need to ditch this outdated obsession with "facts" and print the stories that genuinely get people talking. No one remembers tediously accurate news reports - but unintentionally hilarious human error? Think what more screw-ups could do to drive circulation.
Kudos, then, to the Liverpool Daily Post, which set a fine example in April with its unforgettable review of Welsh National Opera's Cavalleria Rusticana and Pagliacci. As a subsequent apology sheepishly explained: "The computer spellchecker did not recognise the term WNO (Welsh National Opera). A slip of the finger caused it to be replaced with the word 'winos'." Credit, too, is owed to the Dallas Morning News, whose June 15 edition showed how richly compelling a simple typographical error could be. The column in question, the paper was forced tersely to admit, "incorrectly called Mary Ann Thompson-Frenk a socialist. She is a socialite."
For those of us nurtured on Denys Parsons's Seventies collections of newspaper howlers, graduating to Private Eye's books of "boobs", the quest for misprints has always remained a - perhaps the - main reason for reading the daily prints. This year's harvest has been gratifyingly rich. The Guardian, living up to its reputation by calling President Bush "a gland-handing good ol' boy", when it meant the rather less sexually active "glad-handing"; the Denver Daily News, opining about a New Jersey proposal to ban smoking in cars, but regrettably labelling the state "Jew Jersey". Craig Silverman, a journalist whose RegretTheError.com website is an addictive repository of media mistakes, declares the latter to be the 2005 Correction of the Year - although, among all the prematurely buried celebrities, the web spoofs printed as fact and the endless supply of public endeavours that somehow became pubic, there was no shortage of competition.
True, nothing this year could match The Australian newspaper's 2004 apology for misquoting a politician denouncing Syria as "a bastard state" (as the correction pointed out, the National Party senator had in fact said: Syria is "a Baathist state ..."). Nor was there a misprint in the class of the 2003 US television caption, shown live on ABC News's World News Tonight, which informed viewers that Alan Greenspan, then Federal Reserve chairman, was "in the hospital for an enlarged prostitute", when he was being treated for his prostate. As for the all-time classic, it will be a while before we see the likes of the 1981 apology in Community Life, a publication in Pascack Valley, New Jersey, correcting a picture caption listing exotic gourmet dishes enjoyed during a foreign-language students' dinner: "Mai Thai Finn is one of the students in the program and was in the center of the photo. We incorrectly listed her name as one of the items on the menu."
Yet there is ample reason for optimism that today's editors are gifted practitioners of the art. There were the minor matters of innumeracy that prompted awkward retractions: the Reuters report in May, for instance, claiming that "more than 27 Soviet citizens died" during the Second World War. There were the old urban legends gleefully reported as news, exemplified in the Ananova report in January, headlined: "Man peed way out of avalanche". If you are still wondering, no, a Slovak man trapped in his car under an avalanche did not free himself by drinking 60 bottles of beer and urinating on the snow to melt it.
There was, too, the now famous interview quote from a pregnant Britney Spears, which found its way into such respectable publications as The Washington Post: "Like omigod, I have to tell the maid to buy diapers and get the pool boy to walk the dog? Can't I just make out with Kevin all the time? Being married sucks." Alas, this was a newspaper columnist's satire that was picked up widely as genuine. How much more marketable would newspapers be if they went out of their way to pack their pages with such nonsense?
Wanton inaccuracy, clearly, is what the public demands. Too many journalists nowadays are using the notoriously reliable internet to check their facts, when fake news is what appeals to those elusive younger readers. Sometimes, true, misreporting can get out of hand: let's ignore the teensy bit of trouble that Newsweek caused over that supposedly toilet-flushed Koran. Instead, just recall the widespread interest last year in "toothing", the new craze, as defined by Reuters, whereby "strangers on trains, buses, in bars and even supermarkets hook up for illicit meetings" using messages sent via Bluetooth-enabled mobile phones. "Toothing" existed only as a transparent hoax by a few web mischief-makers, but its salacious promise hooked newspapers from Birmingham to Beijing.
The answer is obvious. If the paper you are holding is not to become a relic, Fleet Street requires a dedicated industry-wide body to promote the deliberate propagation of errors. Ideally, such a commission would be led by a smirking, clowning figure known to favour frivolity and gossip over serious policy analysis, although Sir Christopher Meyer may prove unavailable. As for The Times, we reporters will naturally require intensive retraining, as our exemplary professional standards have historically ensured no less than 100 per cent accuracy. Though I do stand to be corrected.
(The Times Comment page, December 31 2005)
We newspaper hacks have been deluding ourselves. Outblogged by teen "citizen journalists", outpaced by 24-hour celebrity-wrestling channels, no amounts of DVD giveaways can keep us relevant into 2006. If papers are to survive, we need to ditch this outdated obsession with "facts" and print the stories that genuinely get people talking. No one remembers tediously accurate news reports - but unintentionally hilarious human error? Think what more screw-ups could do to drive circulation.
Kudos, then, to the Liverpool Daily Post, which set a fine example in April with its unforgettable review of Welsh National Opera's Cavalleria Rusticana and Pagliacci. As a subsequent apology sheepishly explained: "The computer spellchecker did not recognise the term WNO (Welsh National Opera). A slip of the finger caused it to be replaced with the word 'winos'." Credit, too, is owed to the Dallas Morning News, whose June 15 edition showed how richly compelling a simple typographical error could be. The column in question, the paper was forced tersely to admit, "incorrectly called Mary Ann Thompson-Frenk a socialist. She is a socialite."
For those of us nurtured on Denys Parsons's Seventies collections of newspaper howlers, graduating to Private Eye's books of "boobs", the quest for misprints has always remained a - perhaps the - main reason for reading the daily prints. This year's harvest has been gratifyingly rich. The Guardian, living up to its reputation by calling President Bush "a gland-handing good ol' boy", when it meant the rather less sexually active "glad-handing"; the Denver Daily News, opining about a New Jersey proposal to ban smoking in cars, but regrettably labelling the state "Jew Jersey". Craig Silverman, a journalist whose RegretTheError.com website is an addictive repository of media mistakes, declares the latter to be the 2005 Correction of the Year - although, among all the prematurely buried celebrities, the web spoofs printed as fact and the endless supply of public endeavours that somehow became pubic, there was no shortage of competition.
True, nothing this year could match The Australian newspaper's 2004 apology for misquoting a politician denouncing Syria as "a bastard state" (as the correction pointed out, the National Party senator had in fact said: Syria is "a Baathist state ..."). Nor was there a misprint in the class of the 2003 US television caption, shown live on ABC News's World News Tonight, which informed viewers that Alan Greenspan, then Federal Reserve chairman, was "in the hospital for an enlarged prostitute", when he was being treated for his prostate. As for the all-time classic, it will be a while before we see the likes of the 1981 apology in Community Life, a publication in Pascack Valley, New Jersey, correcting a picture caption listing exotic gourmet dishes enjoyed during a foreign-language students' dinner: "Mai Thai Finn is one of the students in the program and was in the center of the photo. We incorrectly listed her name as one of the items on the menu."
Yet there is ample reason for optimism that today's editors are gifted practitioners of the art. There were the minor matters of innumeracy that prompted awkward retractions: the Reuters report in May, for instance, claiming that "more than 27 Soviet citizens died" during the Second World War. There were the old urban legends gleefully reported as news, exemplified in the Ananova report in January, headlined: "Man peed way out of avalanche". If you are still wondering, no, a Slovak man trapped in his car under an avalanche did not free himself by drinking 60 bottles of beer and urinating on the snow to melt it.
There was, too, the now famous interview quote from a pregnant Britney Spears, which found its way into such respectable publications as The Washington Post: "Like omigod, I have to tell the maid to buy diapers and get the pool boy to walk the dog? Can't I just make out with Kevin all the time? Being married sucks." Alas, this was a newspaper columnist's satire that was picked up widely as genuine. How much more marketable would newspapers be if they went out of their way to pack their pages with such nonsense?
Wanton inaccuracy, clearly, is what the public demands. Too many journalists nowadays are using the notoriously reliable internet to check their facts, when fake news is what appeals to those elusive younger readers. Sometimes, true, misreporting can get out of hand: let's ignore the teensy bit of trouble that Newsweek caused over that supposedly toilet-flushed Koran. Instead, just recall the widespread interest last year in "toothing", the new craze, as defined by Reuters, whereby "strangers on trains, buses, in bars and even supermarkets hook up for illicit meetings" using messages sent via Bluetooth-enabled mobile phones. "Toothing" existed only as a transparent hoax by a few web mischief-makers, but its salacious promise hooked newspapers from Birmingham to Beijing.
The answer is obvious. If the paper you are holding is not to become a relic, Fleet Street requires a dedicated industry-wide body to promote the deliberate propagation of errors. Ideally, such a commission would be led by a smirking, clowning figure known to favour frivolity and gossip over serious policy analysis, although Sir Christopher Meyer may prove unavailable. As for The Times, we reporters will naturally require intensive retraining, as our exemplary professional standards have historically ensured no less than 100 per cent accuracy. Though I do stand to be corrected.
(The Times Comment page, December 31 2005)
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