I'll bet there's more to it than that

Phillip Blanchard · **Posted:** Mon Jun 23, 2003 5:43 pm

Tom Honig, editor of the Santa Cruz (Calif.) Sentinel, wrote in s "To Our Readers": In todayâ€™s [June 21] Sentinel, you are reading something that is unprecedented in my 31 years with this newspaper: a third front-page correction of a story.
The original story was published last Sunday on Page 1. The story detailed what was alleged to be a lack of oversight by county government over nonprofit agencies that serve those in need throughout the county.
By now, many of you are aware that the story had numerous factual errors, and also suffered from an inadequate explanation of the financial health of some agencies. We have painstakingly made amends to those whose story we did not tell correctly or completely. ***I noted that some of the entries on a list that followed weren't "corrections," but rather amplifications or after-the-fact editing. The original story seems no longer to be available online. I've asked for clarification.***

Bumfketeer · **Posted:** Mon Jun 23, 2003 8:28 pm

I certainly hope they didn't make the same crucial mistakes my paper made...falsely claiming the AFLAC duck's name is Webber and misidentifying a cat that was taking a shit.

Phillip Blanchard · **Posted:** Tue Jun 24, 2003 8:49 am

From the Sentinel "archives" today: A story published June 15 in the Sentinel on county oversight of local nonprofit agencies' financial health has been removed from this Website. The story was removed because it contained factual errors and did not provide responses from several of the nonprofits cited.***No. You don't pull the story. You append the corrections. You can't pretend the story never existed.***[ June 24, 2003: Message edited by: blanp ]

Phillip Blanchard · **Posted:** Tue Jun 24, 2003 4:42 pm

Google cached the story.

boogabooga1114 · **Posted:** Tue Jun 24, 2003 6:07 pm

<blockquote>quote:<hr>Originally posted by blanp:
***No. You don't pull the story. You append the corrections. You can't pretend the story never existed.***[ June 24, 2003: Message edited by: blanp ]<hr></blockquote>I'm in the lucky situation of having seen the story before it was purged from the Web. A former colleague was the reporter in question and the original quickly made the rounds. Anyway, the newspaper no longer stands behind the story. The top editors made repeated front-page corrections, the reporter's resigned, and most of the editing staff's been shaken up. It's pretty abject all around, but why should they compound the errors by keeping the story on the Web?If you published a libeleous story in the first edition and realized your error while having a bagel midmorning, would you publish the original story plus a correction in the home edition? Of course not, so how's the Web different?

jmcg · **Posted:** Tue Jun 24, 2003 8:05 pm

Pulling a story out of the paper in between
editions hardly pretends the story never ran.
In fact, I'd argue that pulling a story out of the paper is perhaps the strongest acknowledgment
that it was there, all right, warts, errors and all.

Testy Copy Editors

I'll bet there's more to it than that

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