One of the parts of my job I enjoy least is having to make corrections, but it’s absolutely necessary for transparency and for keeping the public’s trust.
Last week, we ran two corrections, though there were a few other issues that people called or emailed to tell us about like some wonkiness with the Things to Do in Belleville piece. The most embarrassing one was misprinting (twice) the salary proposed for the Sumpter Township deputy supervisor, making it look like Supervisor Timothy Bowman wanted to give his son 10 times the amount he actually requested.
We bungled the date of Taste of Belleville as well in the July 23 issue. We’re reprinting the Taste of Belleville/bridge walk in this issue with the correct date, so keep an eye open for that!
The upside I see in having to set up a corrections policy is that our readers really, really care about their paper, and they’re reading it from the front cover to the back page.
Never feel that you are being a bother if you spot an error and report it. It’s my job to be as accurate as possible, but when I make a misstep, it needs to be corrected visibly.
We now have established a formal corrections process, and you’ll see any corrections appearing here on page 4 under my column if there are any to print.
We also have formal policy for letters to the editor now that we’ll print each week on the editorial page. We welcome letters, especially on local topics, though we encourage you to stick to one topic and keep it concise. Also, as part of our new policy: we don’t print anonymous letters.
So, as the headline of this op-ed says, thank you to our readers. It feels like there are a few hundred of you combing through our ads and articles with a fine-toothed comb, but I welcome the scrutiny.
Thanks for reading and for keeping us on the straight and narrow when it comes to printing the facts.