Disir
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- Sep 30, 2011
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In a front-page story last month, The New York Times cast Hillary Clinton as the subject of a criminal investigation. Within hours, key parts of the story started to fall apart. It turned out that Clinton was not the subject, and the investigation was not of a criminal nature.
Matt Purdy, an editor who worked on the story, explained the mistake by punting it to the reporters’ unnamed sources. “We got it wrong because our sources got it wrong,” he told Margaret Sullivan, the paper’s public editor.
The initial story was published to the Web on a Thursday night and landed on the front-page of Friday’s paper. That day, the Justice Department issued a statement conflicting with the Times’ reporting. On Saturday, the word “criminal” was dropped from the headline and lede, and on Sunday, two corrections were published in the print edition of the paper.
What upset many readers was not just that the Times had been incorrect, but that the paper was slow to own up to it. The first substantial change to the story—that Clinton was not the target of the investigation—was made two hours after it was first published to the Web, but a correction was only appended on Friday afternoon, more than 12 hours later.
Why diffing could make news organizations more transparent - Columbia Journalism Review
But, that's not the moral of the story....
It's an introduction to this site:
NewsDiffs Tracking Online News Articles Over Time
Is that not cool? It tracks changes.
That has the capacity to cut down on some drama. Maybe.
Matt Purdy, an editor who worked on the story, explained the mistake by punting it to the reporters’ unnamed sources. “We got it wrong because our sources got it wrong,” he told Margaret Sullivan, the paper’s public editor.
The initial story was published to the Web on a Thursday night and landed on the front-page of Friday’s paper. That day, the Justice Department issued a statement conflicting with the Times’ reporting. On Saturday, the word “criminal” was dropped from the headline and lede, and on Sunday, two corrections were published in the print edition of the paper.
What upset many readers was not just that the Times had been incorrect, but that the paper was slow to own up to it. The first substantial change to the story—that Clinton was not the target of the investigation—was made two hours after it was first published to the Web, but a correction was only appended on Friday afternoon, more than 12 hours later.
Why diffing could make news organizations more transparent - Columbia Journalism Review
But, that's not the moral of the story....
It's an introduction to this site:
NewsDiffs Tracking Online News Articles Over Time
Is that not cool? It tracks changes.
That has the capacity to cut down on some drama. Maybe.
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