Cold clam chowder, straight from the can

Dr. Ink offers advice, serious and humorous, to editors on a full range of problems and issues, journalistic and managerial. Questions may be real or hypothetical, and may be rephrased to protect personal or institutional privacy. Send them to drink@poynter.com.

Dear Dr. Ink: I’ve just started my first newspaper job (working on the night copy desk), and I need to know some stuff, like: Do I have to eat dinner at my desk every night? If so, is it permissible to use a knife, fork and spoon, or do I have to make do with my fingers and a pica stick, like my co-workers do? Where do I get a pica stick, anyway? And what would I use it for?

P.S. I just saw my boss eat cold, cream-style chowder straight from the can. Do I have to do that to get to be an editor?

Answer: When reporters read this question, it will confirm their impression that copy editors are scary. Like vampires, they come out at night and suck cold chowder from tin cans. Think about what they must suck out of the copy?

The doctor knows this image is untrue. His love for copy editors is boundless. He even finds them sexy in a nerdy kind of way. That is why Dr. Ink hopes this young copy editor will not eat his or her midnight snack chained to a desk. Journalists are busy beavers, but they need some relief from the rigors of sitting down, and from the claustrophobic effects of the office. Inky is not advocating hitting the late night bars, or walking the shadowy streets. But an occasional visit to the all-night diner clears the mind, the bowels and the sense of disconnection from the city.

As for where to put that pica pole ...

Dear Dr. Ink: As near as I can tell, there is nothing approaching consensus among American newspaper editors on when it is appropriate to publish a story based on anonymous sources. Some editors say, “Never!” and stick to it. Some let anonymous sources into everything from front-page local stories to the Pet of the Week feature. Where does The Doctor stand on the use of anonymous sources?

Just sign me,

Two sources familiar with the situation willing to speak only anonymously.

Answer: Predictably, Dr. Ink has consulted several prominent editors on this question. They offered their opinions, but none wanted to be quoted.

There’s only one thing that would hurt the credibility of news reports more than anonymous sources: That would be the failure to report something crucial to the public interest because of too scrupulous an inhibition. No ethical imperative is more important than: Tell the public what it needs to know.

That said, anonymous sources are used way too often, especially in seats of power, especially in Washington, where the practice is almost a fetish. Anonymous sources are used even to report on trivial matters. It almost seems as if the reporter and source in Washington prefer the glamour of anonymity.

These guidelines seem wise to the anonymous doctor:

• If you use an anonymous source, the burden of proof is on you that the story is important enough to warrant it.
• Be especially suspicious of anonymous sources who seek to launch personal attacks.
• If you use an anonymous source, try to publish enough information to reveal the source’s real or potential bias.
• Before you publish, go back to the source to try to get him or her on the record.
• Don’t allow such guidelines to help you place a naive or vulnerable source in harm’s way.

Dear Dr. Ink: Where do you think newspaper should run corrections?

Answer: Dr. Ink once heard the story of a man from up North who moved to Florida and subscribed to the St. Pete Times. He noticed that the Times printed corrections routinely. He happened to meet a Times editor and complained that the Times made so many mistakes, and that his hometown paper never made any. “How do you know?” asked the editor. “Well, they never print any corrections.”

That anecdote aside, Dr. Ink agrees with those who argue that timely and well-placed corrections build the credibility of news organizations over time. But where to place them? Some argue with passion that the correction should appear in the same place the mistake was printed, and that argument contains the value of proportionality: big mistakes, prominent corrections; tiny mistakes, small or no corrections.

News organizations make many mistakes that do not require correction: a detail in a narrative story that says the character only worked two days at a new job before quitting, when it was three days.

Dr. Ink, in spite of his reputation for infallibility, has made a few boo-boos in his day. He likes the idea of a regular space in the paper for all kinds of corrections, clarifications, and explanations of how things work or how they went awry.

He imagines a space on the bottom of 3A, perhaps, where readers could learn to look, as they do with comics. In other words, corrections (especially corrections of corrections) should become a favorite feature. They should be written with gusto.

Dr. Ink’s siblings, Dr. Blink and Dr. Link, remind him that corrections are a serious problem for broadcast and online journalists as well.

Where in a television news report should corrections be aired? And should corrections be highlighted and announced online, or simply corrected for the archives. In general, Dr. Ink prefers methods that make the process of reporting the news (including inevitable mistakes) more transparent for the reader.