My First Mistake

"Although many journalists may think that spelling and grammar errors, wrong names, wrong titles, wrong addresses, wrong dates and other similar mistakes have relatively little to do with the press's credibility, the public sees it otherwise" pg 13

America's Best Newspaper Practices

Boy, do I know this one well. Last spring, while still a very new journalist, I was assigned an article on the University Choir's concert and subsequent performance at PMEA. While listing the names of the people who had solo songs, I gave credit to Jessica Florian for one. She was not the soloist: it was Breanne Grec (spelling?). My editor did not catch my mistake, nor would I expect her to, since she did not have an extensive knowledge of the University Choir. The article was printed. I got a lot of complements on it: someone even hung it up in the music lounge. Shortly after, I got several comments about my mistake. Not only had I given credit to someone who did not do any work, my mistake made me seem somewhat ignorant about my subject matter. I mean, I had the program from the concert in front of me, yet I must have just read Florian's name and it stuck in my head (total and complete brainlock). A little mistake it may be, but it could have easily been avoided if I had just paid more attention.  It is these kind of "trivial" mistakes that sour people on newspapers. If I had gotten something so obvious wrong, how sure can they be that nothing else was amiss?

and while we're on the subject of mistakes that could have been avoided...who remembers the infamous "office of pubic information" incident? It was in the same issue as my PMEA article...guess it was a bad week for everyone

bonus: what song is my title from? (hint: she plays piano)