“To err is human, to correct, divine"

By John X. Miller, Public Editor, Detroit Free Press

Delivered on March 15, 2006

Thank you, Brian, for the introduction. And while I am at it, I want to thank my mentors, professors and the entire Washington and Lee community. Attending W&L was a life-altering experience. It is with great pride and satisfaction – and some nervousness -- that I stand before you today.
Additionally, I would like to thank the Donald W. Reynolds Foundation for funding of the distinguished visiting professorship that brought me back to my alma mater.

Thank you all for coming to listen to my musings about journalism accuracy, news media credibility and what can be done to restore the public trust in journalism.

My role as public editor at the Detroit Free Press the last 6 years, and my experiences as an editor at five other newspapers over the last 28 years have given me a perspective that will shock and awe -- NO-- wrong cliché -- that will shock and surprise you. Let me say up front, I am what I do, a journalist, but I am an American citizen and a hu-man first.

That’s why I have chosen this topic, “To err is hu-man, to correct, divine” as a way to talk with you about important lessons that I have learned along the way. I want to suggest that systematically correcting journalism’s mistakes, increasing transparency and interaction with the public can bring the news media back from the brink on irrelevancy.

You may wonder why my pronunciation of hu-man; that’s because that’s how it is pronounced by one of my favorite star trek characters. Yes, I’m a trekkie, because I believe Star Trek is a metaphor of a hopeful future where all races and ethnicities can get along.

But I digress.

I chose the quote by 18th century poet and satirist Alexander Pope from his An Essay on Criticism because it outlines in its couplets critical tests and standards for living. It acknowledges we are all hu-man and prone to mistakes. Yet, we can be godlike in forgiveness. We should learn from those mistakes and correct them. It is in the best interest of journalism to acknowledge and correct our errors, strive to be accurate, balanced, fair and ethical, and to search out the truth.

As the public editor, I’m a one-person complaint department. I talk with readers about things they dislike about the newspaper. I don’t get much positive reinforcement from the public. For every 50 complaints, I get about 1 complement.

Daily, I write the corrections, track down their causes and make sure they get published in a timely fashion. I help facilitate conversations with readers, by organizing reader groups, and relay what readers say to the newsroom in a daily blog.

It is a job that requires resilience because I get complaints of all kinds, but it is a job that I think is vital to the survival of newspapers like the Free Press because it helps maintain a constant connection to readers.

Readers want to know all kinds of things about the newspaper, and related subjects. At times, I have to explain reasons why a headline was snarky, why we dropped a page of stock listings or a popular column, even why Mitch Albom was not fired after fabricating parts of a sports column last April. I have to state the reasons we do what we do even though I don’t agree with the reasoning at times.

I’ve taken some strange calls, including advice to shave my beard -- which I did – people cursing because the Jumble puzzle answers were left out, and many early-morning calls from Sgt. Motown, a Vietnam War veteran, who is an insomniac and wants to talk about his fight with the Veterans Administration and the programming on Detroit’s best jazz radio station. I also get calls asking for phone numbers for the local TV stations, from people with legal grievances with ex-spouses who think judges are persecuting them, and, weekly calls asking where people can send their church announcements and death notices. I get calls from students doing class assignments on newspapers, people looking for journalism jobs, and people who want to pick a fight about the newspaper’s perceived political bias.

Readers appreciate the time, effort and consistency of listening to them and correcting mistakes. It assures them that accuracy isn’t taken for granted by the newsroom. And we need their help.

No system will easily admit its wrongs without outside intervention. That’s why detailed information on errors can help prevent them.

Studies by the Readership Institute at Northwestern University point out that it is small errors that irritate readers the most. Incorrect names, numbers, facts, omissions, misidentifications and misquotes. We have identified these errors by the hundreds, and these are the ones we correct.

Here’s an example of an e-mail from a reader last week, about a photo caption on the local section front page. It was the photo of two people gazing at a beautiful a red and blue Thunderbird convertible at the annual Autorama in downtown Detroit. The caption incorrectly said it was a 1953 model instead of 1955. The reader’s quote: “From what little of the car I can see, it looks like it is a 1958-1960 model. I suspect it was a 1958. Someone mistook the “8” for a “3.”

Well he was right. It was not a ’53 T-bird, it was not a ’55.

In August 2003 at the Free Press, we held an error-free week to raise the level of focus and discussion about errors during a traditionally high error period, the summer. We had found through analysis of previous summers and corrections trends that during summer months we had more corrections, partly due to vacations, and people working unfamiliar jobs for those on vacation. For instance, in June, July and August, we normally average about 5 more corrections monthly than during other times of the year.

What I discovered analyzing errors in hindsight is we are able to pinpoint problem areas, as they were happening, because I examine trends not just isolated errors. That has been helpful many times. An example: Recently, errors were happening too frequently in the business section. Within two weeks, the section had 5 errors and 3 of those were in charts, or graphics. The same reporter was involved in three of those errors. So we started searching for solutions, and discovered a reporter new to a highly competitive beat.

I discovered this by systemically examining errors, analyzing their origin and devising solutions to help prevent errors before they occurred. My model was Detroit, and the auto industry. What I discovered was that improving quality was not an accident. In fact, it was a very specific set of tactics long employed by Japanese industry and particularly its automakers, as they rebuilt their industrial base after World War II.

The architect of Japan’s industrial renaissance was Dr. William Deming, an American industrial statistician who nearly single-handedly reframed how mass production manufacturing processes were evaluated.

As a statistician, Dr. Deming’s lifelong mission was to seek sources of improvement. Statistical methods were in use in business prior to 1940, but did not play much of a role in the complex world of product manufacturing. Gradually, he concluded what was needed was a bedrock philosophy of management, with statistically consistent methods.

He was ready with new principles to teach when the Japanese called him in the late 1940s. And he continued to refine and enlarge upon these principles for the next three decades in what is called the Deming Management method.

It is the primary reason Japanese manufacturing quality has been and continues to be the best in the world.

Daily newspaper production remarkably resembles the modern assembly line. Raw materials in (pages of journalism and advertising), an intricate mechanized production apparatus, a workforce with many specific repetitive jobs, piecemeal quality control processes and mass produced products dispensed to individual consumers.

With Deming’s example in mind, the accuracy and credibility committee at the Free Press, which I set up once I took the job, discovered several important systemic factors in why we committed errors.

Let me just tell you about a problem and two solutions.

Photo caption errors: The problem was misidentification errors in photo captions and credit lines. The captions were written from proofs of the photos, which had been photocopied. But when they were copied, the I’s became L’s, R’s next to N’s became M’s; O’s became A’s. It was a production process that was causing the errors; once we discovered that, we changed the process to eliminate the problem. Since then, caption errors because of misidentifications infrequently happen.

Accuracy checklists. These detailed what every person can do in their jobs to catch errors before publication. The checklists gave specific tasks, such as calling telephone numbers from the screen. These checklists, which we shared with any newsroom or journalists who asked, helped to pinpoint certain points in the production of the newspaper where errors were likely to occur. The checklists, distributed to the everyone helped reduce simple errors because it helped define everyone’s specific role in re-verifying information. These checklists can sit on peoples’ desks, be cut apart and taped to terminals and accessed through the newsroom intranet.

During these last 6 years at the Free Press, I have had many lucid moments in which I could very clearly see and understand why we make mistakes and are loath to correct them. Why do we make them? Here are several very astute reasons, stated by Free Press journalists on correction forms they fill out after every correction.

• On a NUMBER ERROR: “The error was a typographical error. I dropped a zero. The error can be avoided in the future by back-reading my copy one last time.”

• An incorrect fact: “I should not have relied on press notes and memory; should have checked resources available.”

• A MISIDENTIFICATION: “To miss an obvious error is bad enough, but to introduce one is essentially inexcusable. I can’t blame severe deadline pressure, either, although, as I recall it, I was thinking about getting the page set on time.”

• Another incorrect fact: “It’s unclear how I missed this. I have, in fact, written stories before about this. Maybe a slow final read before filing might have caught this error.”

• And another: “When the retailers assoc. faxed me their statistics, I should have called to confirm their numbers meant 37 percent of retailers had sales down, rather than saying 37 percent of sales were down.”

• Lastly: “This was hu-man error, pure and simple. I knew that the cubs were tigers, and wrote that down in my notebook. For some reason, when I wrote the story, instead of writing tigers, I wrote lions. In the future, I can run through every single detail again with the source even when I am sure I am right.”

So there are ample reasons we get information wrong. Yet, the relationship readers have with their newspapers is a very eclectic bond. There’s a secret behind their attachment to comics, crossword puzzles, columns and contests. That emotional connection is something journalists do not quite grasp. Errors alone won’t drive them away.

I mentioned columnists. The Free Press has a well-known columnist by the name of Mitch Albom, which most of probably heard of; he is author of 2 best-selling books, Tuesday’s with Morrie and The 5 people you meet in heaven, both which have been made into movies. He’s probably the most recognized sports columnist in the country and regarded by his peers as the best in the business.

Last year this time, he was accused of fabricating part of a story about the NCAA basketball tournament, causing a firestorm that further polluted the public’s view of Free Press journalists and its journalism. Over one month, I received thousands, yes, thousands of phone calls and e-mails about the incident. Here’s what happened.

Mitch wrote a column about talking with two Michigan State basketball players about playing in the Final Four while watching their team play North Carolina in the national semifinal. He wrote the column on an advance deadline; it was not to be published until April 1, though he wrote it on two days previous on Friday. He said the two players were in the crowd watching the game. That was their intention, but they did not go to the game.

The Monday of the NCAA title game one day after it was published, I was told the players were not at the game. I found out later that the Detroit News, our “partner in the joint operating agreement in Detroit, had a brief on Sunday saying the players did not attend. I asked the sports editor to double-check with Mitch to see if indeed the players were not there, since we could not simply take the word of our competitor. On Wednesday, we found out it was true, and immediately I wrote the correction with the help of the publisher and managing editor, and Albom apologized in a column in the April 7 newspaper. The correction read:

Mitch Albom's column in the Sunday section said NBA players Mateen Cleaves and Jason Richardson attended Saturday's Michigan State-North Carolina NCAA tournament basketball game. They did not. Albom did interview the players Thursday night and Friday morning. They described travel plans and the intention to sit together at the game. Their plans changed because of scheduling conflicts. The Free Press should not have reported the players were at the game. We do not present as fact events that have not occurred. Albom's column appeared in a section printed before the game. The Free Press apologizes for misleading readers. Albom addresses the error in his column on Page 1D. The headline to his column read:
I OWE YOU AN APOLOGY FOR SUNDAY'S COLUMN: HERE IT IS.

The results: An avalanche of criticism from the media, intense scrutiny of all things Albom by a Free Press investigative team that was examined hundreds of previous columns to check to see if there were more fabrications or plagiarism. There were scrutiny and condemnation by other journalists from around the country, some of whom wanted Albom fired immediately.

After about a 4-week investigation, the newspaper published the results that said he had not fabricated other stories but he had not identified the source of several quotes used in some columns, which was not an uncommon practice among sports columnists, including at least two at the Free Press.

And we heard from readers, who mostly thought Mitch should be forgiven, for a minor error, especially if we discovered it was his only fabrication.

Why did not readers get this basic journalistic principle of telling the truth and not making up information? The stark contrasts between the public’s and of journalists’ reaction are puzzling and disturbing. Here’s what they said:

• I just leaned about the ongoing investigation of Mitch Albom. I also read your policy on Ethics. I really do not see how this infraction falls under your Ethics policy. I do not believe Mitch's intention was to mislead your readers. I believe his trust in others and a paper deadline is what brought about the problem. I do not feel his intention was to hurt the credibility of the Free Press in any way, shape or form. I think the fallout from this article and the constant "second guessing" of his future articles will be more than enough of a reprimand for Mitch. I hope the Free Press will reinstate Mr Albom and his column will once again appear in your paper. Furthermore, I think he has done more to hurt himself than The Free Press could ever do to him. I wish Mitch and The Free Press all the best.

• We are all hu-man, we make mistakes and we should learn to forgive.

• I can’t believe what you are doing. He made an honest mistake. The newspaper is full of misrepresentations all the time.”

• You worked the Mitch thing into the ground and treated him like a criminal.

• I never did like Mitch; but its way overreacting about what he did.

Here’s something else I learned from that episode: You can’t trust some reporters.

My first interview after the Albom incident was with a TV reporter from the local Fox News station. We chatted for 10 minutes, before the interview very our conversation was relaxed, we even chuckled about something. Yet, when the interview began, his tone changed. (CHANGE MY VOICE) His voice actually changed, and I clearly felt that his questions were adversarial. He asked, for instance, if Albom had been suspended. I said no, but his column was not in the newspaper. He asked wasn’t that the same thing. I said no because the distinction was he was still on the payroll.

The interview lasted for about 8 minutes, but only 2 sound bites of me made it on TV, about 15 seconds of it. During the entire interview, I thought the reporter was trying to put words in my mouth, meaning I would say one thing, he would restate it in his words -- which weren’t mine -- and then he would ask if I agreed. I didn’t; he tried again and I didn’t agree, again. I restated a third time, now I was irritated. And that 15-second response showed up on air.

More people blame the news media today than just a few years ago for driving controversies rather than reporting the news in a fair, accurate and balanced way. My experiences with that interview and all my years in newsrooms validate that belief.

Most members of the news media concede they are somewhat out of touch with the public, and they blame themselves more than the public for declining audiences. News media executives and journalists view the public not as uninterested or uninformed, but feeling overloaded by news and information. And with more choices, the public seems to trust the mainstream media less.

Clearly, though, the future of newspapers, of all media, is in multimedia.

Convergence, as taught here at Washington and Lee’s Journalism and Mass Communication’s school, means the future of media will look very different than the past.

Yet, there are certain values that should remain, even as technology forces delivery of information and news onto devices we could have only dreamed of 6 years ago, at the start of the 21st century.

Will too many choices lead to a further narrowing of the news media’s idea of audience to include only those in niches? What about public service journalism?

But how does multimedia serve citizens or readers? How does multimedia serve audience? We do that by pursing the truth.

No matter what the medium, journalism’s obligation is to get the truth of public matters before citizens, and to not treat them just readers, audience or customers. Here’s why that’s so important now:

The breakdown of citizenship in America can be linked to the decline of shared experience and ownership in American public life. The dynamics of modern work have taken people away from collective experiences, creating a contemporary society that places little value on individual contributions to the greater society. Our society just places too much value on individualism. Scholars and academicians have explored the relationship between work and democracy, which I think are both clearly on the decline in America.
Ultimately, the civic life of our communities depends on each of us exercising our responsibility as citizens, not just our rights. We talk about our rights all the time. We talk little about our responsibilities, living responsibly and acting like we are stewards of this republican democracy.

What can save American journalism? I’ll conclude by offering three suggestions: Community or civic journalism; citizen journalism; increased commoditization of journalism

Community journalism is the type of journalism done by journalists who are holistically involved in their community. They are more closely connected to their readers, their concerns and communities, and this type of work is done mostly at newspapers around 50,000-75,000 circulation.

It is a blend of watchdog and chicken-dinner news, breaking and neighborhood news, public service and community service information.

What’s best for the public is not always apparent in newsrooms. Journalists have to look outside the building and accept that people are not like us. We can’t look at only what our target audience thinks is best because the basis of our journalism ought to be what our communities needs have.

Ultimately, the civic life of our communities depends on each of us exercising our responsibility as citizens, not just our rights. We talk about our rights all the time. Let’s start talking about our responsibilities, living responsibly and acting like we are stewards of this republican democracy.

It includes growing and using journalists’ knowledge of their community by creating a local journalism with a certain signature, knowing “the music of community.” It needs to be apparent to readers/customers/citizens that the newsroom has their best interest in mind. It needs to be apparent that journalists cover things real people care about and not just reported in a custodial fashion. It means listening to conversations that reveal what stories and issues are most relevant.

When I think about it, I think about the Free Press acknowledgement that readers like animal stories, lost dogs found, rescued kittens and aging elephants Wanda and Winky embraced.

This new journalism resembled current journalism in some ways, but mostly not. Today’s journalism is superficial in many places, top heavy in courts and crime news, which are concerns of readers but not their preoccupation.

Richard Harwood, president of the Harwood Institute for Public Innovation, has been working for nearly 20 years to help find what can trigger a renewal in public life; he believes people are looking for coherence, meaning and the possibility of hope in order to be lured back into the public arena.

Harwood says, and I’ve seen other studies that concur, that Americans have retreated into cocoons, finding solace, comfort, support. This phenomenon has been going on for years.

You can understand why, cynicism and doubt rein. The war in Iraq is a political and military quagmire; political polarization is increasing; the fault lines of immigration, affirmative action, pro-life and pro-choice pushing us apart.

Where does our civil and civic future lie? It lies in a place where few of us in the U.S. can reach right now. In closeness, intimacy, duty, responsibility and belonging to something great than thyself.

Citizen journalism is emerging from the blogosphere as a possible way back to civic engagement. Through experimentation, revelation and expectation, ordinary people are changing the model of mainstream media. Look at what happened in the wake of the massive tsunami of December 2004. Before mainstream media could get to the region, video, audio and written reports from people who witnessed the tragedy were providing news to the world about the event.

These citizen journalists and bloggers are demonstrating a fundamental shift in authority. That authority will continue to shift from once trusted institutions to communities or individuals who have earned credibility. And the authenticity they bring will directly affect news media coverage. We saw that happen with CBS and Rather-gate.

Citizen journalism allows people to go around traditional media to get information they want and to communicate broadly to whomever they want.

Journalism has already been commoditized by the multinational corporations that own U.S. media, so let’s use all media too loudly and consistently trumpet the value of accurate and relevant information in support of our way of life. This should be a prime season to do it as our way of life and place in the world is being challenged home and abroad.

But before getting on with the business of saving the craft, there are three key problems that must be dealt with head-on:

First, gender bias in media: 2 weeks ago, I distributed an e-mail about a recent report to the seminar class, Race, Gender and Media that was distributed by a member of the Organization of News Ombudsmen, of which I am a member and on the board of directors.

Last month Stephan Pritchard, the Readers’ editor at The Observer newspaper in London, sent an e-mail to members on the Global Media Monitoring Project’s “Who Makes the News?”

Here are the first paragraphs of the report:

Women - half the world’s population - are barely present in the faces seen, the voices heard and the opinions expressed in the world’s media. Don’t believe me? Then look at Who Makes the News? a report published in London this week. It makes shaming reading.

Right around the world, for every woman who appears in the news there are four men: only 21% of news subjects - the people the news is about - are female. In not one major news topic do women outnumber men as newsmakers. In politics, the subject that dominates the news agenda internationally, the picture is even grimmer - only 14% of news subjects are women. When women do make the news it is primarily as celebrities (42%) homemakers (75%) or students (51%).

Though this is an international survey, the same problems plague U.S. journalism. This was very apparent in a 2004 study, titled “The Great Divide: Female Leadership in U.S. Newsrooms,” conducted by the American Press Institute and the Pew Center for Civic Journalism. One key finding, 67% of women sees sexism as blocking opportunities for them in newsrooms.

Second, we make too many mistakes: Grammar, misspelling, bad numbers and locations. Fix this or we will continue to slowly bleed away confidence that readers have in us. How about volunteer citizen fact-checkers in newsrooms?

Third, Uncertainty about the future. Who would have guessed a year ago that Knight Ridder would be up for sale and the McClatchy newspaper group would buy it. And that that sale would be driven by Wall Street’s relentless quest for increasing margins by Knight Ridder.

I remember when editors actually said they didn’t think newspaper would go away because you could not fold it and take it into the bathroom stall. And they earnest. And they were wrong.
Some 170 years ago, Alexis de Tocqueville, the Frenchman who observing American life, said: "You can't have real newspapers without democracy, and you can't have democracy without newspapers."
I believe journalism must fix its credibility problems within the next 10 years, or our democratic experiment will be in serious peril.

So what will we do to save journalism? Stay tuned.

Now if there are any questions anyone would like to ask, please do.