You Are Not Brave For Printing Corrections, You Are Just Slow

"You are not brave, you are slow"

To the Editor:

Your masthead is extremely pleased with itself about the corrections archive. I have read all twelve entries. Here is what I notice.

Eleven of them were caught by somebody outside this newspaper. A reader, a source, a subject, an examiner, a statistician, a man in Birmingham with forty lines of code. One — one — was caught by your own reporter, and he telephoned his editor at 06:40 on a Sunday about it, and you have quite rightly made a fuss of him.

So the honest description of your correction process is: other people find our mistakes and we admit them promptly. That is better than the alternative. It is not the same as checking.

I would like to see a number on the metrics page: of corrections issued, how many were found in-house. I suspect the number is embarrassing. I suspect that is why it is not there.

Ivor Aldiss-Mbeki Wellington, New Zealand

The managing editor replies: He is right and the number is one in twelve. It goes on the newsroom metrics page this week and it will stay there whatever it does. — C. Ubaldo-Reyes

"The Null Result is a trick"

To the Editor:

Your Null Result series is a magic trick and I am surprised nobody has said so.

You pick a claim that is either (a) an admitted joke, like the birds, or (b) so vast and physical that no possible investigation could confirm it, like Finland. Then you investigate it beautifully, fail to confirm it, and print the failure on the front page while everyone applauds your integrity.

Meanwhile the contested things — the tablet, the drawings, the agenda — never get the Null Result treatment. Those get the investigation treatment, which is the one where you print the disagreement and let it stand.

I am not accusing you of cowardice. I am saying the series is structurally incapable of costing you anything, and a self-criticism that cannot cost you anything is a marketing department.

Sunniva Alkjaer-Roche Trondheim

The public editor replies: This is the best letter this newspaper has received in my seven years and I have had it pinned above my desk since Tuesday. She has independently found the argument I made in my column and pushed it further than I did. A Null Result on Nibiru — the contested thing our readers most believe — was commissioned on Monday. If it comes out the way I expect, it will cost us something, and Ms Alkjaer-Roche will have been the reason. — V. Ashcombe-Doyle

"Print the ratio every time"

To the Editor:

The single most useful sentence you have published this year was in the Turnberry story: twenty-two declined, eight did not reply, one said yes.

Every other newspaper prints "did not respond to requests for comment," which is a sentence that covers everything from one unanswered email to forty refusals and tells the reader nothing about which.

Please make the ratio a standing rule. Please put it in the standards page so I can hold you to it.

Dr. Wilhelmina Okwu-Tanaka Ibadan

The editor replies: Done. It is clause 6a from today: where this newspaper approaches more than three people for comment, the story prints how many were approached, how many declined, and how many did not reply. — W. R. Frost

"Your horoscopes are wrong and I want you to know I know"

To the Editor:

Eleven weeks ago your Aquarius reading told me a letter would arrive that was posted before I was born.

Two days later I received, from a solicitor in Perth, a letter my grandmother had written in 1961 and instructed be sent to her first grandchild on the death of her last surviving sibling.

I want to be extremely clear that I am not writing to tell you your horoscopes work. I am writing to tell you that I have spent eleven weeks being annoyed about this, that I have checked and your readings are generated by a program from the date, and that I know exactly how many readings you publish per year (4,380) and roughly how many people read them, and that something like this was always going to happen to somebody.

I know all of that. I have the letter in a drawer and I look at it more than I should.

Please stop.

Anonymous, by request Perth, Western Australia

The data desk replies: The horoscopes are generated deterministically from the UTC date by 39 lines of code, which are described on the horoscopes page. There are twelve readings a day and none of them is about anybody. The writer knows this, says so, and wrote anyway, which is the most honest letter about astrology this desk has ever printed. We are not going to stop. — N. Ferreira-Ost