WEEKLY WHINE

Focal Plane: Compulsive correctors

This is the third instalment of the GoobNet Focal Plane, an occasional series wherein we highlight an unimportant social problem, trying to make you care about it. Previous edition: Empty Searches.

Activity in the Los Angeles Life newsroom is slowing down. Reporters and editors are on their ways out the door. Of the few who are still here, one man catches the eye. Whereas most others are placing telephone calls to let their loved ones know when they'll be home, this man is still at his computer, intently reading something.

"In my column in tomorrow's issue, I said that Saturn has the most known moons. I want to make sure that's still true before I publish it." The result? "Saturn has 30 confirmed moons, but not all of them have been given permanent names yet. Jupiter has 28, Uranus 20. For now, Saturn is the leader."

Why does Andrew Engblum care so much about ephemerides of solar system bodies? "I know that if I put the wrong thing in my column, or anything that may be construed as wrong, I get immense numbers of letters. Things like 'You should be ashamed of yourself, trying to deny Saturn its rightful place as satellite leader!'. It's outrageous, really. Some of these people seem to have a little bit too much time on their hands."

The clock reaches 01:00 PST. Finally satisfied with the accuracy of his column, Engblum lets editor in chief Sal Khilumna know that he is done. In under an hour, printing presses in various parts of the Los Angeles basin will begin generating copies of the next issue of Los Angeles Life, containing Andrew Engblum's "Running Amok" column that appears twice each week.

Culture of complainers

Engblum's story is that of thousands of reporters and columnists across the United States. Julie Rivaldi, owner of the Media Mediator website [http://www.mediamediator.net/], has recently completed a study in which she finds that 30% of responses to newspaper, magazine, and Internet articles [including physical mail and E-mail] are making corrections to the author.

Explains Rivaldi, "Some of these are important, valid corrections to the content of the article. But many of them are just nitpicks, things like minor statistics. A person stands 1.64 metres instead of 1.63, something irrelevant like that. Even worse are the ones that are not even factual. These are about one third of all corrections."

Into this latter category, Rivaldi places things like "completely surprised" rather than "very surprised", quibbles over the use of "unforgettable", and the like. "Any time someone uses any sort of superlative, whether it's 'grainiest', 'noisiest', or 'beyond comparison', they'll get letters saying that no, this person isn't beyond comparison because they can be compared to such and so."

In her interviews with the nearly one hundred reporters who made up Rivaldi's survey sample, she began to get an idea of why so many people have chronic cases of pedantry. "It seems to have a lot to do with the structure of American culture today. So many people are stuck in jobs that, to them, are barely a step up from meaningless. These people need a way to feel like they're making a contribution to society, that they matter. Complaining is a common way to do that. If there's someone who really irritates you, you can go on Jerry Springer or Jenny Jones and spend the show complaining about them. Those who aren't blessed with someone who really irritates them instead have to complain about other things, like the column they read in the paper that day."

'Just human nature'

"What the hell!" says UK Daily science reporter Jan Wiegmann from her desk in the newspaper's London offices. "My article's been online for only an hour, and I've already got eight E-mails complaining about how I hyphenated 'Caltech'!"

Wiegmann, who recently participated in Rivaldi's European followup study, has been more sensitive to corrections recently. She says that she receives corrections at about the average rate, according to Rivaldi's American study. "Janet was very interested in finding out whether there's a cultural gap involving corrections. I told her that I don't think so. If you break down where the people who send me corrections live, it follows the breakdown of our general readership fairly closely. So I don't think there's any significant difference between nationalities - they all seem to complain about the same."

Do these results contradict Rivaldi's conclusion that American culture is to blame? Wiegmann thinks something larger is responsible. "I grew up in what used to be East Germany, which of course was the poorer half of Germany at the time. It still is, really. You saw the same sort of thing there. I can't speak for the reporters then, but I did notice that there was a lot of ... well, unrest isn't really the right word. Discomfort, maybe. We all knew that things could be better, and there seemed to be a lot of political activism. As much as you could have, that is; it was still effectively a totalitarian state.

"There were quite a few things that people weren't happy about, and they wanted to make their displeasure known. Often they couldn't make their displeasure known to those who were responsible for their displeasure - the government tended not to like that. Nothing's changed since then, except the thing that's making people unhappy. Everybody who's not happy about something wants to let someone know that they're not happy. It's just human nature, really. Sometimes they choose to let people like me know that they're not happy. That's unfortunate, but you learn to recognise such people and realise that they're really mad at something else. They're just taking it out on you."

Who are they?

Wiegmann said that she was surprised when she realised that many corrections were coming from the same few people. "There are a few people who seem to send me corrections every time I write an article. I'm starting to wonder if they're stalking me or something." Though the topics of her articles vary from the latest theories on planet formation to high energy physics to hearings on stem cell research, a few people send her corrections regardless of the field. "And more often than not, they're right. I don't know how they do it."

Engblum's responses follow the same pattern. "A few people keep sending in things like 'I can't believe you screwed up again', but there's one guy in Torrance who's always trying to catch me with an incorrect statement. He had the right idea from the start, saying 'I couldn't help but notice...' and things like that. He'd make corrections, but nicely. So by now it's become kind of a battle of wits. I keep waiting for the day when I get to correct one of his corrections - I'm sure it will come soon."

Rivaldi answers, "I think that's a healthy attitude to have. Too many people get pissed about their nonstop barrage of corrections. Hell, everyone makes mistakes. There just aren't very many professions where every one of your mistakes gets scrutinised to endless detail. Alongside journalists, put astronauts, teachers, and professional athletes. Anybody else who makes a small mistake can usually live past it. But journalism is one of those jobs where you're only as good as your current mistake-free streak."

As long as there are words, there will be people trying to correct those words. But many authors would just as soon let the editor be the one to correct those words rather than readers - there aren't quite as many editors.