Some observations from someone who went to Journalism school back in the 1970's and then worked in the business. I don't know what is being taught in J-school these days but back then the emphasis was verify, verify, verify. Verify spelling, dates, quotes, etc. Both the dictionary and the AP Style Book was/is God. While I am grateful for the spell and grammar check functions of computer programs such as Wordperfect (I'm no great speller), they are no substitute for using a dictionary. Google and Wilkpedia cannot substitute for direct verification of hard facts such as proper name spelling, dates or place names. Fact finding involves hard work. Interviews require personal contact and e-mail or video phone calls usually don't cut it. Ever hear of eye contact and body language? Perhaps the problem today is that both editors and journalists are becoming too lazy. The news media is a business and has to be profit oriented but it need not be moronic.

Let me add my ancient and quavering voice to the chorus. The problem is not that so few corrections are made. The problem is that so many bonehead errors are made. To be fair, journalists now have to deal with names from another alphabet, one without vowels. There really aren't any rules for transliteration from Arabic the English. That said, there is no excuse for the types of errors I see everyday. Rod Dreher, writing for the Dallas Morning News, claimed Pope Urban VII who died in September 1590, was involved in the controversy with Galileo. In the same article, he made Bjorn Lomberg a Swede. Since I live in Dallas, I am accustomed to the slipshod ways of our only daily and verify everything I read, which is how I found out that Urban VIII not the VII dealt with Galileo and that Lomberg is a political scientist/economist, not a scientist as Dreher had it. And that the man was born in Copenhagen, which makes him a Dane, not a Swede.

It used to be that papers like the Times, the Herald Tribune, etc., prided themselves on the fact that their copy boys knew things like that off the tops of their heads.

I suspect that papers would do better saving money on redesign and spending it on copy editors who can spell and will look up things they don't know.

If, like me, you work in the arts and are subject to the tender mercies of reviewers this doesn't come as news.

The newspapers accuse bloggers of being amateurs when this is exactly what, with very few exceptions, their own reviewers are. Particularly in local papers. They know nothing, have no expertise, only opinions. And try to get them to correct something in a review!

I stopped reading papers for this very reason. When events are described of which I have direct knowledge nothing is right, Why should I assume their news reporters do any better?

Tom, your comment on copy boys who used to know basic facts illustrates what has happened to Journalism and, I think, education in general. Too much fluff and not enough facts. I suspect the average high school student in 1940 could not only find Germany on a map but could spell it correctly. In 2007 I doubt the average college student could find it on a map without Google or spell Germany correctly the first time.

I find it curious that the discussion of journalistic errors is always limited to the print media. When was the last time you saw a correction from the electronic media?