Best Practices

Do u make mistakes?  Do your friends make mistakes?  Do your teachers make mistakes?  Ya everyone makes mistakes, but in the news world, theres no room for mistakes.  I never realized how many mistakes the news world actually made.  Its one thing to spell the word and wrong, but to mistake someones name, the date or time of a crime, the area, anything crucial to the story, is another very big deal.

You don't think about it, but news casters on television, they make mistakes too, its not always as obvious, but they do, its just they can correct themselves.  In the news paper or a magazine article, its not correctable till after its printed.  For example, some big time reporter gets a great story, writes the article and prints it, BUT he forgets someones name, or he mixes up the name, then the whole story is wrong.  Unlike on television when you can easily correct yourself the only way you can undo your damage in a news article is to reprint it.  This is ok except, it takes time and money.  First the story needs fixed, then the whole article needs reprinted, and this doesn't exactly happen free of charge.  I guess i never realized how important it was to double check, proof read and make sure everything was perfect.