In response to my Joy of Blogging post a reader writes:
I have seen this sentiment posted on many blogs, and I think it displays a lack of knowledge about the newspaper industry. As someone who has done my time in the trenches of a small town daily newspaper, I can assure you that readers do not hesitate to write, call, email and stop by offices if they see an error. Misspell the name of the winner of the local Girl Scout cookie sale and you can be sure that there will be multiple phone calls in your voicemail within minutes of the issue hitting the streets.
As to the timeliness of corrections — that is something in the innate nature of newspapers, true. But I fail to see why that negates the entire value of a newspaper. Television news can correct instantly, as can radio news. Each medium has its own strengths and weaknesses.
I think this comment underscores the point I was making, the second half of which is the fact that journalists have no way to immediately correct their errors even when they learn of their mistakes. Advantage blogs. And the cost of contacting a journalist to report an error is MUCH higher than emailing a blogger, coupled with a much diminished incentive to incur the cost since corrections are so unlikely. I don’t doubt that readers do it as this person reports, but I am quite certain that many readers do “hesitate to write” to report an error. Heck, I just had a profile in the Newton Tab in which my son’s name was completely wrong and I did not bother to let the reporter know. (I cannot link to the story because it is now “archived” and I do not see how to access the archive. Another advantage blogs.) Given that no correction would be forthcoming, it just didn’t matter, and why make the very nice reporter feel bad about his mistake? Even newspaper websites are not updated the way blogs are. So here too I think that blogs are at a comparative advantage to traditional journalists. And far from “negat[ing] the entire value of a newspaper,” I pointed out that traditional reporters remain the primary source of information that feeds the blogs.
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