Tuesday, October 4, 2011

Controversial: Our First Fatal

I'm sorry to say we had our first fatal on this assignment. One of you identified Hugh Baker as the school superintendent, when in fact he was the athletic director.

That is a fact error. That is a fatal.

And that's not the worst thing, at least right now. Odds are that all of you will fatal at least once. Most of you will fatal a few times.

What we are going to try to do this term is identify any patterns of fataling, so as you build your fact-checking habits, you zero in on any types of facts or writing circumstances that seem to make you more fatal-prone. Then, we can create solutions to make sure you fact-check in a way that helps target those problems.

In general, though, please make sure you aren't just spell-checking your story, and that you are also fact-checking a story. Identify people, places, things, statistics, dates and titles. Make sure all are correctly used and spelled. Check your quotes and make sure nothing is wrong.

Let's try to make fatals a rare thing this term, okay?

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