I have often said that working online is a bit like joining the Wallenda family. You remember them. They're the daredevils who walked tight-ropes across stadiums and did intricate high-wire acts.
They also often worked without a net.
I know how they feel.
The truth is in the early-morning hours, while updating our website, I'm also often working without a net.
Yesterday I fell.
Big time.
It started innocently enough. I wanted to get the latest update from the Associated Press on the tragic ambush shooting of two troopers in Blooming Grove, Pa. One trooper was killed and a second wounded by a gunman who had been lying in wait outside their barracks late Friday night.
The AP stories usually come across with a suggested hedline on them. It's not unusual for me to change the hed when I post the story on our website.
Here is the hed that AP supplied with yesterday morning's update on the trooper story:
Police: Trooper hurt in ambush conscious, talking.
There were a couple of things I wanted to add to the hedline. For one, it did not note that this was a fatal shooting, one of the troopers had in fact died. Second, it did not mention the dragnet that was out for suspects in the killing.
Unfortunately, in constructing the new hed, I made an egregious error.
Here is what appeared atop the new story on our website:
Pa. trooper killed in deadly ambush now conscious, talking; hunt for suspects pressed.
Really?
Obviously, in my zeal to note that this was a deadly ambush, I had botched the new hed, in about the worst way imaginable.
One of my favorite things about the Internet is that, with a few quick keystrokes, a mistake can be easily rectified. Voila! The hedline was fine.
Except we all know that it was not. That hedline was seen by a lot of people, many of whom emailed me to let me know about it.
I am actually glad they did. It allowed me to correct it.
It did not allow me to avoid the reaction that it sparked. And to be honest, that is not entirely a bad thing.
The hedline made its way to the Romenesko site, the popular journalism website that keeps tabs on the industry, and also occasionally displays our foibles and mistakes.
I actually posted a comment on the site shortly after it was posted. I wanted the public to know this was not a mistake by someone on my staff. It was mine.
In a perfect world, no doubt I would have taken more time to read that headline before I posted it. Or had someone else look at it before it went up on the site. I don't work in a perfect world. These days, the journalism world is far from it.
That does not excuse the fact that we displayed a particularly egregious hedline for thousands of people to see.
I was a bit taken aback by some of the comments posted online about it, as if I somehow did not realize that the hedline was wrong. It couldn't get more wrong. The trooper was dead, despite this clumsy hedline's effort to bring him back to life.
One of the themes many people noted is how the trooper's family would feel. I can only imagine. If I added at all to their grief, I sincerely apologize.
But it also struck me that it apparently did not dawn on the many people who went online to poke fun at the mistaken hed that their comments might also not be exactly respectful to the family. That's what we do these days online.
But one commenter went somewhere I had not expected. In this blog yesterday, I noted that Sunday night I had attended a viewing for a strong Irish matriarch who very much reminded me of my own mother.
A reader posted this comment on my blog: "How would you feel if you saw a hedline after your mom died saying she is conscious and talking?"
It was like a kick in the gut. But it was the truth and I told the person so in a comment of my own. I would feel awful.
We're doing a lot of things in the newspaper business that we did not used to do. Staffs are stretched thin, even as our world expands, delivering content in a 24-hour news cycle.
Speed also is part of this equation. We do everything in a hurry.
Sometimes we move too fast.
In print we get one chance to get it right. Once the newspaper comes off the press, there is nothing I can do to change that content until the next day's print edition.
The Internet allows us to correct errors in real time.
But some errors are easier to correct than others.
Lesson learned.
Comments