By Seth Boyes,
Seth Boyes, News Editor
I’m going to admit, I had trouble getting an opinion column off the ground this week. It wasn’t for a lack of topics. In fact, I have a folder marked “scraps” where I keep partially developed columns which fizzled out, just in case they become useful down the road — my “scraps” folder got a couple more contributions this week.
There was some interesting data I saw Monday, showing how immigration is acting as a buoy for many counties across the Midwest — and about 70 percent of the counties in Iowa. I got about 300 words into a column about that fact before my mental well ran dry. I thought about letting out the grumpy old man (who often seems to have usurped my inner child) and extol the virtues of the days before CGI dominated the film industry — that one never got off the starting line (you’re welcome).
So, as I sometimes do, I took a quick walk around the office to reset my mind, only to discover a white envelope waiting on my chair when I returned a few minutes later. Inside was an opportunity — specifically, an opportunity to build trust with you, dear reader, by owning up to a mistake, though it be but little.
Last week, the Decorah Leader’s opinion page featured a letter from one Sheri Borcherding. And that letter contained a typo toward the end, which was not Ms. Borcherding’s doing.
Alas, it was mine.
Astute readers might have noticed the phrase “How come we aren’t Decorah-Nor Winn?” in the letter’s final paragraph, which should have read “How come we aren’t Decorah-North Winn?” It was I who typed up the original hard-copy letter for publication, so obviously it was I who committed the typo while transcribing the letter at some point last week. Admittedly, my fingers do sometimes tire after a long day of typing, and I imagine I didn’t quite hit a couple keys hard enough that particular day.
Worse, my mistake obviously slipped by my aging eyes before I initialed the copy for publication, and I remained ignorant of my mistake until Ms. Borcherding sent another note to our office this week, asking for a correction to be printed.
Well, corrections are typically reserved for factual inaccuracies rather than typos. But I can see how this particular typo might have caused some readers to mistakenly believe she was using the word “nor” as some kind of pun to make her point.
So, I apologize for my mistake.
As I said, it may seem like a small thing in terms of the ink it involved, but I believe it matters. It matters when a newspaper admits its mistakes with the aim of making the truth more clear to the community. It matters because readers like yourself need to be able to trust in not only the printed reporting on these pages, but in the character of the people behind the pen…err, keyboard.
In short, it matters to me, because it matters to you.
As I’ve said before, we newspaper folk are mere fallible mortals — common clay. We try our best to catch every mistake before the presses start rolling (my staff can tell you just how often I’ve asked them to double check a phrase or factoid in a draft while I read over their work each week). But things do get by us from time to time, and that’s where corrections come in.
The size of error isn’t so much the issue. It’s transparency. In many ways, we’re still getting to know each other, dear reader. I’ve only been in this specific chair for about seven months, and trust can often be a frail thing, especially in its infancy. It builds in thin layers over many years. And sometimes, when the community’s calcified confidence becomes chipped by a few fumbling fingers (mine in this case), it needs to be patched up a bit to ensure it continues to grow.
And if that’s best achieved here on the opinion page, rather than a typical correction, so be it.
Sorry again for the mistake, Ms. Borcherding. I hope it didn’t cause you too much trouble.
Agree with Seth? Think he’s got it completely backwards or he’s missed the point entirely? Let your voice be heard. Letters to the editor may be emailed to editor@decorahleader.com or dropped off at 110 Washington St. Suite 4 in Decorah.
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