corrections

I was thinking a little more about Powerline and the whole Schiavo memo thing over the weekend. (I know, I know, this issue is almost dead, but still…)

It was interesting to see how they continued to hammer the Washington Post even after making their own mistake.

And after mulling it over, I do think they have a point.

Put aside the whole issue of whether or not Powerline was responsible in calling the memo a likely hoax, or whether the Washington Post’s errors were large and consequential or small and inconsequential.

Why shouldn’t newspapers correct even small and inconsequential mistakes? Bloggers do.

I mean, look — the mainstream press is under seige here. We’re like the lumbering T. Rex under attack from dozens of nimble velociraptors.

It really doesn’t matter whether we think these critics are fair or unfair, partisan or evenhanded, hacks or noble “citizen journalists.”

They have megaphones now. It’s a whole new ballgame. We need to roll with the punches, and adapt. By failing to correct even minor errors, we’re giving them issues to beat us over the noggin’.

And really — bloggers are the velociraptors in my metaphor because they’ve been significantly more nimble, taking advantage of the flexibility of the Internet. But we both use the same medium — this wonderful medium where really the only limit is our imagination. We just need to be more imaginative.

An example: the other day, in this story I wrote, the photo caption was originally wrong. It said this solar-powered backpack was manufactured by Compact-Impact, when in fact they just sell it. The entrepreneur behind the backpacks asked me if I could change the caption on the web.

And before he asked — it had never occurred to me to do that!

In fact, the only way I was able to make the change easily is because I’m buddies with one of the web guys. I bet most of the staff wouldn’t whom to ask, to correct one of their published stories on the Web.

Ridiculous, right? We still think in terms of static type — or at least, I that what I was doing.

I’m not saying what we did was ideal, simply correcting the caption … it’s not transparent, something the blogosphere seems to long for.

But why can’t all stories have a “history” page, like Wikipedia? That way reporters could make changes to a story after it’s published, and bloggers could track those changes. (With permalinks to each version, natch). Or maybe newspapers websites should use the strikeout (e.g.) feature bloggers are fond of.

But we should be doing something , because what we’re doing now obviously isn’t working.