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Lessons to be learned from the miner debacle

Thursday | January 5, 2006 | 8:11 pm  

My former news editor, the honorable Fred Vultee has a great discussion going about what you can, can’t, and definitely should put in a headline about the status of trapped coal miners.

I wasn’t paying terribly much attention to the story until the story became about the story — metajournalism?

I couldn’t believe the shoddy sourcing the papers, and TV, were using. (Ok, I could believe TV was using such shoddy sourcing.) The governor heard from a relative at the church who got a phone call from someone else — give me a break!

While I was reading about the aforementioned shoddy sourcing I kept hearing this voice in my head saying, “says who?”

“Says who?!”

The voice was Fred’s. That phrase was one of many I’d often hear him saying to me, or the copy editors we we’re supervising at the Missourian.

Fred’s got a great listserv for current and former Missourian copy editors, headsup, that’s always been a fun time, at least for people who think copy editing is fun (a small minority of which I’m proud to be a member).

Bowing to Web 2.0 pressure, or just because he can, Fred has added a blog aptly named headsuptheblog.

So, to make my long blog entry short, Fred’s got some great thoughts on the whole miner debacle going that you should read, but I thought this was a particularly good nugget o’ wisdom ™(patent pending):

It reminds us, or ought to remind us, of a few phrases that ought to be translated into Latin and etched in stone above the copy desk, so we can point to them when needed:

1. If attribution is part of the story, it’s part of the hed.
2. Speculation isn’t confirmation.
3. Repetition isn’t confirmation.

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