Newspaper (and other periodical or serial) “Corrections”

No, you can’t always believe what you read (you didn’t know this already?), but this is not cause for despair. While print authors remain forever frustrated when they notice errors after publication, especially those who know they aren’t likely to be corrected in future printings, online authors, and especially journalists, have an easy if imperfect fix. Jonathan Franzen of Corrections fame, has nothing on newspaper Corrections. There is even a “corrections” blog, Regret the Error, which on top of being very funny, has links to the corrections pages of many major newspapers.

Our Oregonian doesn’t have a link at Regret the Error, but it does have a Corrections section on its web page (and in the print edition).

Bloggers have the best “correction” options of all. We can edit, include the correction in a Comment, or the mother-of-all-corrections – we can delete (though imperfectly). This, as you can imagine, is why law librarians want the laws printed on paper. Shenanigan-free (mostly).