Meeting: Still Too Many Fatals

Like I've told you before, usually in the first half of the semester there's a spate of fatals, before it cools down in the semester's second half.

Well, we're at halftime. And we ended the half with too many fatals on this assignment.

I wish I could say we've been learninglessons, but we're still making the same sort of mistakes.

Like with the spellings of names. In the commission story, one of us wrote the sheriff's name as Gus DisCesare. In fact, the last name was DiCesare, without the first "s." When we finished writing, we needed to double-check how we wrote every name, to make sure it matched how the name was written in our information.

In another case, we spelled the sheriff's last name as both DiCesare and DeCesare. One has to be wrong, right? When we finished writing, we had to double-check each name as listed above and look for inconsistencies in how we spelled any single name.

A misspelled name played into another instance where we listed the SunCrest development as SuncCrest, with one too many c's. Again, this goes to checking not just people's names, but project names.

And Pittsburgh is spelled with an "h" at the end, not Pittsburg, as one of us did. So we can throw city names as something to check as well.

In the same story, we attributed a q1uote made by DiCesare to Carlos Rey, the spokesman for the condominium project. We need to go through our finished work to make sure that all attributions are correct, as compared to our information.

In yet another case, we said two life-saving girls performed CPA. CPA stands for certified public accountant. What you meant was CPR, or cardiopulmonary resuscitation, which is a life-saving technique. We need to check the names of technical terms to make sure they are correct and consistent with our information.

And last but not least, in one story we were very sloppy with numbers, saying commission members make $51,00 a year (we dropped a number; the correct total was $51,000) and that the propsed increase was to $56.500 -- the period replacing the comma literally makes it 56 dollars and 50 cents, instead of the correct $56,500. Not only do we need to double-check names and attribution when we are finished writing, we also need to check all figures.


I implore you to spend MORE time doing basic fact-checking. Really, for every minute you spend writing, you should be dedicating a minute to fact-checking.

So, if you have one hour in which to write a story, spend the first 15 minutes going through the information and making sure you understand all the facts. Then, spend 30 minutes writing. Then, spend the last 15 minutes going over what you wrote to make sure everything matches your information.

In the end, you'd spend 30 minutes writing and 30 minutes ensuring accuracy, a one-for-one ratio.

Now, how to spend the fact-checking time? Use any one of the three checklists I've provided this semester -- or,better yet, all three -- to get ideas on how to do that and what to watch for. You can connect to those checklists simply by clicking on the "fatals" label at the end of this blog.Doing so will take you to every fatal-related blog post we've done this semester, including ones containing the checklists.

Either way, it's critical we start turning the corner. The second half is about to begin.