Becoming the story

You might take some slings and arrows from the local fans, which is always a bummer (and also nothing new), but you should be proud of what you did. The easy thing is roll with the party, the right thing is getting things straight. Inside, would Coach want his 600th win if he knew it wasn't real?

 

I would now re-examine every one of his other 599 "wins."

 

I see Mizzou's point -- and then don't agree with it.

As long as the writer didn't steer the result in the WRONG direction, all's well that ends well. I would hope the guy wouldn't want to reach his milestone by a decision that was wrong, and as somebody else said, the final score was actually what the wrestlers decided on the mat.

And, it was also accurate for the paper, which is the ultimate goal from his side.

I understand the discomfort and think it was fine.

But ... I used to get into those "explain what we did" columns in my first few years in the business -- I wrote what I now consider an infamous one about a story I DIDN'T get, which was basically telling a story I couldn't nail down under the guise of "explaining the situation" -- and I'd pass on that. The whole thing can be explained in two "Coach X initially thought his team had won the match, but rechecking the score showed the other team actually won" paragraphs.

 

My friend, who worked for said preps editor, asked him what he was thinking after they asked him about the scoring error...

His response: I was praying the margin would be more than two points...

 

yup.

 

I completely disagree with you. Our job is to question, which is what he did. How would he have known he had the right answer had he not looked at the teams' books?

I can't tell you how many times I've caught calculation errors several times and then pointed out to the councils I was covering so they could fix it.

When I have a town council that wants to go into executive session for no good reason, I stand up and politely tell them they're about to break the law. If they do it anyway, I write about it. Am I now part of the story? Yes, unfortunately, but that's how it goes sometimes.

We question and we get it right. That's what we do.

 

I agree with everyone that you did nothing wrong here. You didn't set out to change the outcome of your story -- just to make sure you had it straight.

That said, I'd be curious to know what the column said. Can you post it or give us a general idea? Because I tend to side with SF_Express that those kinds of columns aren't necessarily the way to go.

 

About a year and a half ago, I wrote a column in which I explained why my paper doesn't endorse political candidates. Now I don't know if that's similar to the kind of column you think is not such a good idea or not, but I don't know if I'd write that kind of column again.

 

I'd rather not post the whole thing, but considering I did have something to do with the outcome of the match being changed, our assistant editor and I thought we should explain how it came to happen. I wrote about how the mistake was discovered, explained that I wasn't looking to rain on the parade, just make sure the information on my notepad was correct.
It was all info that you wouldn't write about in a gamer, but I thought pertinent nonetheless. I wish I wouldn't have written it to an extent. But at the same time, I think it would be easier for a reader to question my ethics finding out weeks later that I was the one who found the mistake, than it would be to come straightforward with the scenario as it played out.

 

Why do you tell them they are about to break the law? Isn't it their job to know the law? Wouldn't you be serving your readers better by just writing that they violated the law?

 

Because watchdogs don't just watch ... it's my job to make sure the public's business actually takes place in the public.

 

I don't think he meant to get involved. he meant to figure out where he screwed up. If I'm covering a basketball game, and my notes don't match the scoreboard, you're damn right I'm going to find the official book and try to figure out why I'm off. Otherwise I'm not doing my job.

After the error has been discovered, what are we supposed to do? Pandora's box has been opened ...