The Free Press, Mankato, MN

News Ticker

Joe Spear

March 22, 2006

Newspapers make mistakes; some can be big

By Joe Spear

The Free Press has a long tradition of admitting when we’re wrong, and last week we were wrong in a way that significantly impacted the reputation of a local company.

We published an incorrect headline for a story about a computer security program demonstration being conducted at Midwest Wireless that stated, matter of factly, that Midwest Wireless’ computer system had been hacked into.

As far as mistakes go, this was one of the biggest, and it’s a mistake we regret. It was repeated in every one of the 23,000 or so copies The Free Press printed that day. Add in the pass-along readership, and some 70,000 people could have seen that headline. Web site readers also number thousands per day.

Midwest Wireless Chief Executive Officer Dennis Miller said he knows mistakes happen at every business, and to his credit, quickly forgave The Free Press. But he makes important points that are good for all of us at the newspaper to remember.

One word can do a lot of damage.

A wireless business must above all convince its customers it protects their privacy and their data. In fact, the Federal Communications Commission has fined companies as much as $100,000 for learning they were not keeping customer information private.

The incorrect suggestion that Midwest Wireless was somehow not able to maintain the privacy of customer data was the biggest hit taken by the company from the incorrect headline. Miller knows some people only read the headline, and he concedes people will still probably come up to him weeks from now asking about the company’s security. A headline is hard to take back.

We take mistakes very seriously at The Free Press. We know a headline like this gets repeated over and over by people who didn’t really read the story or didn’t understand it.

While the secondary headline on the story said the computer security event was a “demonstration,” it was not clear to many people that Midwest’s computers had not been hacked into. It was a “remote computer” system that had been hacked. The demonstration simply took place at Midwest Wireless offices.

Beyond the usual personnel actions we take when our employees make mistakes, we also have employees who make mistakes complete a form with a number of questions that help us track mistakes and determine how and why they were made. And most importantly, to figure out a way to avoid them in the future.

We have developed a written policy on how we handle corrections.

One of our editors compiles the mistakes and provides a periodic report to the entire staff. It helps raise awareness of the importance of accuracy in a newspaper and prevents us from quickly forgetting about mistakes.

Just as security is a hallmark of good customer service in the wireless industry, accuracy is the hallmark of good customer service in the newspaper business. We’re committed to those principles.



Joe Spear is managing editor at The Free Press. Contact him at 344-6382 or jspear@mankatofreepress.com.

Text Only | Photo Reprints
Joe Spear