Controversial: We Had Some Fatals

Most folks did pretty well in this assignment. Some grafs were too long (some people need to hit the "return" key more often and make shorter grafs) and too many people need to remember to double-space your work so I can fit comments in the margins.

Unfortunately in this exercise, we did have some fact fatals. In fact, many fatals.

Now, before we all start hyperventilating, let's put this into context. The hardest thing for young journalists to master is fact-checking and integrating fact-checking habits into their daily routines. That's because we come into our first journalism classes thinking it's more about writing then getting it right, when really it's the other way around.

So early every semester, there's a spate of fatals. And the reason we grade fatals so harshly is to get your attention that yes, fact-checking really is that critical. It's not just lip service; we need to get things right, period.

(For the record, 10 members of this 16-student class are already card-carrying members of Omar's JRN 200 Fatals Club, with at least one fact fatal on a graded assignment to date. We'll get t-shirts made soon.)

(And you're not close to being alone: in five years of teaching JRN 200, I can count the number of fatal-free students on one hand, and I have no idea how they did it. Almost everyone fatals at least once -- and, more typically, two or three times -- in here. Including dozens of people who ended up 3.5ing and 4.0ing this class. So again, don't freak out. The semester isn't close to being over, and your grade is far from being locked into anything.) 

Through fatals, we want to be able to identify where we're weak during these practice stories, any one of which is only worth around one percent of your final grade. It likely won't have much -- if any -- long-term impact, as you'll get a chance to show improved skills in higher-weight assignments as the semester rolls on.

Still, we can learn from these mistakes. And the lesson today is, it's not the big mistake that kills us. It's the little things we overlook and take for granted, like names.  

In one case, we spelled one last name as both Adler and Sadler (the former is correct).

First, a fact-by-fact fact check after writing would have revealed the misspelling.

Second, simply reading the story and noticing an inconsistency would have also highlighted the goof. After all, your last name is spelled only one way. Discovering two spellings for one last name would automatically tell us that one has to be wrong, and a potential fatal that needs to be fixed. 

In a second case, someone did basically the same thing, alternating between the last name of Baker and Bakers (the former is correct).

In a third case, we spelled the Adler name incorrectly, as Alder. Despite an awesome alternate lede and great story structure throughout, this was more than enough to sink the story.


In a fourth case, someone wrote a story that was structured almost perfectly. I mean, the grade could have been in the high 3's. But the story missed a letter inside of a quote. We wrote game instead of games, with an s.

Now, if that error was outside of a quote and it didn't change the meaning of the story, then it's just a spelling error. But inside of quotes, we have to be exact to what the person said. So, even a simple dropped letter costs us in this case.

In a fifth case, inside of a quote we replaced the word who with that. Again, which it doesn't change the meaning, it's not what the person said, exactly.


Now, do fatals suck? Yes, they do. You automatically get a 1.0 on the assignment, no matter how well you did otherwise.

That's so we can emphasize how the root of journalism isn't writing, it's getting it right. There is no such thing as getting a "little" thing wrong, as any error mars our credibility.

Now, a bigger problem is not turning something in at all. The two things we have to do every time out in journalism is get it right and meet our deadline. And the latter I penalize more harshly, with a 0.0 grade.

Unfortunately, two of us got the 0.0 for failing to meet the deadline at all. If you didn't get a graded assignment back, that's why.

And that's much, much worse than getting a 1.0. How, you may ask?

Well, everything we do in this class is part of a 1,000-point scale. And in that scale, each assignment is weighed as part. If you get a 4.0 on an assignment, you get 100 percent of points eligible for that assignment. If you get a 3.9 it's 99 percent, a 3.8 is 98 percent, and so on.

So if you get a 1.0, you still get 70 percent of possible points. If you get a 0.1 -- which I don't think I've ever handed out -- you get 61 points. But a 0.0 is zero points. You fall much further behind the point scale than if you turn in the worst story ever written.

Is there a journalistic value reason for that? You bet. An editor can work with a piece o' crap story, no matter how bad it is. They can fix it and clean it up sufficiently as long as they have it. But they can't work with nothing. Nor can you fill up a newspaper page or a TV script with nothing.

It's your responsibility to make sure you don't forget an assignment, as it is in the real world. It's your responsibility that you're not even one second late on your deadline, as it is in the real world. And as in the real world, it's your responsibility to make sure your assignment is routed to the right place, which in this case is omars@msu.edu.

Them's the breaks, folks. It sucks, but let's at least learn from these errors so we don't repeat 'em.