The reason we go through every single fatal of the semester is so that we can learn from our mistakes, and avoid them in the future.
One of today's lessons is, talent has nothing to do with fact-checking; that is, how good you are in terms of story-telling and interviewing and all that is no measure of whether you need to diligently fact-check. You always have to, no matter how good you get.
In one story, we did a great job of putting together a lede and structuring the story. But we spelled the first name of suspect Andrew Caspinwall as Andre, with the "w" missing. And that's a fatal.
In a second story, we said the attacker was rapping a woman. In fact, he was raping her,allegedly. And no, it's not a small misspelling.
That's because when a reader takes a look at a story, they have no idea what it is about. They only find out by reading what we write. So if we write that someone is rapping, that's what the reader will believe you intended to write. And they'll be confused.
Because rap is a real word. And it has many, many definitions: to hit sharply and swiftly; to strike; to utter sharply; to criticize of blame; a reprimand or censure; a legal sentence to serve in prison; a negative quality or characteristic associated with a person or object; to accept punishment for a crime, especially when innocent; to enchant or seize with rapture; to discuss freely and at length; musical style in which rhythmic and/or rhyming speech is chanted to musical accompaniment; to perform rap music.
You could have a dozen Pulitzer Prizes hanging from your wall and when you finish writing, you still need to go through every name, every title, every address, every number, and every fact in your story and double-check each against what you have in your interview notes.
It's like being in shape. You can be Mr. or Miss Universe, but if you skimp on working out you;ll end up a flabmeister. There are no corners to cut if we want to avoid fatals.
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