Getting it right is everything in journalism. Get it wrong, and readers have no reason to trust you or rely upon you.
That's why we're so anal about fatals.
Unfortunately, there was a fatal on this assignment, right here:
The Institute for Highway Safety revealed that 16-year-old boys are no longer the most risky drivers on the road, and that 16-year-old girls are.
That is a misreading of your text. This is what the book said, on p. 176: "16-year-old boys remain the most risky drivers on the road . . . But this year the institute found that 16-year-old girls are gaining."
This, folks, is a fatal.
And it happens from time to time, especially with young journalists writing about unfamiliar topics. Still, that doesn't absolve you from doing proper due diligence and making sure that you understand a story correctly and that you present it to your readers correctly.
That means double-checking every fact and figure and spelling. That means reading your work, line-by-line. That means building in time to do that within a deadline.
Fortunately for you, this was an ungraded assignment, so there's no penalty. But keep in mind, when graded assignments start, ANY fatal is an automatic zero on an assignment.
I don't do that to be an ass. I do that to make it clear that having a habit of making many fatals is the quickest way to lose a job in this business. If you can't get it right, you can't do this for a living.
But don't freak out. We'll work throughout this semester to build good habits that will help you corral fatals before you move on to bigger and better classes and internships. I'd rather that you work fatals out of your systems now, as opposed to when the stakes are much higher for you.
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