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Tuesday, March 11, 2008

How did Malcolm become Michael overnight?

There I was yesterday, banging on in a lecture to journalism students about sub-editing. Specifically, about the importance of checking facts and figures in stories and getting names, dates and places right. Small mistakes can have a disproportionately large effect on a reader's trust in a news organisation, said I.

And what did I see on the front page of the Herald this morning? A story about the Vatican's revamp of the seven deadly sins attributed to a reporter called Michael Moore. But it wasn't by Michael at all, but by Malcolm Moore, the Telegraph's Rome-based correspondent.

Deary me.

More interesting was the fact that the paper carried a different version of the story than nzherald.co.nz, which went for a Reuters version by Philip Pullella.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hi Julie,
I'm not sure about the mistake.
But I can say that there are significant differences between the Herald Online and the Herald newspaper for sources.
A paper like the Telegraph is happy to have its stories used in a paper on the other side of the world but not interested in having them on nzherald.co.nz where they compete directly with telegraph.co.uk
Jeremy Rees
Multimedia Editor
nzherald.co.nz

Julie Starr said...

Hi Jeremy,

Thanks for explaining the difference.

It's an interesting point, given the current imperative to find efficient ways of sharing content across multiple platforms - web, mobile and print.