Q&A with Ashley Leath, copy editor at Southern Living

Ashley Leath is a copy editor at Southern Living magazine. She has also worked as a freelance editor on the topics of food and travel. In this interview, conducted by email, Leath talks about her job at Southern Living, including editing recipes, and the magazine’s outlook in the digital era.

Q. Describe your job. What do you do on a typical day?

A. A typical day involves a combination of Travel and Food stories. I began my career in Southern Living’s Food department as a recipe editor, so a lot of my experience involves recipe-related copy editing. When I moved to the Copy Desk in 2011, I took over the Travel department’s copy editing as well. This means that my day is spent balancing the needs of both departments’ copy.

For my Travel stories, I’ll begin the day by making fact-checking calls, which means that I reach out to contacts as varied as park rangers, interior designers and PR reps. We make a concerted effort to maintain the factual accuracy of our stories, so this is an important step in the editorial process, and the bulk of this responsibility falls on the Copy Desk.

In addition to fact-checking stories, I’ll edit the text and input any changes into the copy on the network (we use InCopy to manage our stories). It’s a simple process — but multiply it by 15 stories per issue with anywhere from 1 to 50 sources to check per story, and you’ve got a lot to balance while maintaining accuracy.

Food stories are an entirely different animal. Our recipes are developed in-house by our Test Kitchen, and each one goes through a complicated testing phase before it reaches my desk. When a story is ready for copy editing, a manila folder will find its way to me, and that means that the recipes inside it have passed the Food department’s review and are ready for my read.

We have a strict food style that is outlined in a 200-page stylebook, and I use this as my guide when I edit the recipes. I begin by doing a top read of all the recipes in a story (on average, four to six of various lengths). Then I examine the testing notes for each recipe. This means I read handwritten notes from each stage of testing (a minimum of two to three). I’m looking for discrepancies: Did the amount of flour stay the same from one test to the next? The lemon zest was increased in test two but not updated on the latest version of the recipe. Should it have been?

These are easy questions in and of themselves, but recipes are complicated endeavors with important things at stake. One wrong word, and you’ve ruined Christmas dinner (or worse, burned down a kitchen). If I find a discrepancy, I work with the Test Kitchen to get it resolved. At the end of this process, I once again enter my edits into the story copy on the network.

In between all of this reading and editing, I have the luck of attending a taste testing each day with the Food department. A lunchtime break for my eyes is very welcomed, and the food isn’t too shabby either.

Q. What are some challenges of editing for the magazine? Rewards?

A. Time is a copy editor’s worst enemy (perhaps right next to a spell-checker). We are not a weekly publication, but when we head into production, stories can move through the pipeline swiftly.

You may need a full day to get a story into perfect shape, but because of that looming deadline, you’ll only have a few hours. You have to learn to be smart with your time, balance multiple deadlines, and still produce the top-notch work that is expected of you.

As for rewards, there are many. First, my co-workers. You spend more time with the people you work with than you do with your family (especially during production), so you need to really like your co-workers. Southern Living has a great staff, if I do say so myself.

Also, for someone who loves to eat, you can’t beat a slice of fresh-from-the-oven apple-carrot cake (destined to grace the magazine’s cover) on a random Tuesday afternoon. I leave work every day with a very happy stomach (and sometimes snag leftovers for my husband too).

Q. Southern Living has an internship program for copy editors. What does the magazine look for when selecting interns?

A. First, an error-free resume and cover letter. This is your first chance to introduce yourself to us, so make sure each of these items is without error.

Next, enthusiasm! We want you to be excited about working with us and helping with our work. Copy editing is meticulous, but rewarding. It will be much more fun for all involved if you enjoy it as much as we do.

Lastly, experience. This doesn’t have to be another internship necessarily, but we do look for what you’ve been involved in that has exposed you to the type of work you’d do for us: fact-checking, copy editing, researching.

Be involved on campus with organizations that will give you exposure to this (The Daily Tar Heel, Blue & White, etc.), and you’ll be able to tout these skills on your resume. It will also help you find and nurture references, which we check with before hiring anyone.

Q. Much of the news media, including magazines, are going digital. What do you see as Southern Living’s place in the changing landscape of news?

A. This is a complicated time for magazines. We’re trying to find our niche in this new digital landscape, and it’s a quickly moving beast.

Southern Living has made huge strides in this arena in the past few years. We’ve carved out market share on our website and in social media. Did you know you can follow us on Instagram and get behind-the-scenes pictures of our taste testings?

We’ve done this by harnessing our relationship with our readers. They feel an ownership of the magazine that is unique to SL.

We have to carry that bond to all platforms that the brand explores — web, video, tablet and more — and be able to maintain our core message successfully. We have to keep our readers’ trust and give them what they expect from us where they expect it, and that means providing content on more than just paper.

We’re striving to continue what we’ve done best all these years — represent Southern culture and tout the wonderful people of our region — on digital platforms that can reach a wider audience than ever before.

Student guest post: Can an app replace a copy editor?

Students in JOMC 457, Advanced Editing, are writing guest posts for this blog this semester. This is the fourth of those posts. Laurie Beth Harris is a junior at UNC-Chapel Hill majoring in journalism and Southern studies. She is the copy desk editor for The Daily Tar Heel and a former intern for WRAL.com.

In late January, The Washington Post released a prototype of its new TruthTeller app. This app fact checks a live political speech, with the help of PolitiFact, Factcheck.org and The Washington Post.

TruthTeller takes what the speaker says, figures out the factual elements and provides links to previous fact checks of similar facts verified. It removes the human element from discerning fact and fiction in political discourse and leaves copy editors with the question — is this the future of copy editing and fact checking? Could our jobs be replaced with an app?

Granted, this kind of technology, while not the first of its kind, is not advanced enough yet to be able to be applied to fact check everything a copy editor edits. But fact checking a basic news story not a far stretch from fact checking a live speech — an algorithm is able to write a basic sports story now.

The technology behind the TruthTeller app relies upon providing facts verified by humans. For live political speeches, TruthTeller has the potential to be extremely useful for checking claims on the fly. Beyond quickly checking facts, a program can’t replace the work of a good copy editor.

Spelling and grammar check has already proven that spelling correction can be automated, but we all know that spelling and grammar check also has its limits. How many times have you written a grammatically correct sentence, only for Microsoft Word to underline it in that annoying shade of green?

Automated fact checking has the same limits. For example, let’s say someone claims that tuition at UNC-Chapel Hill will rise by 20 percent next year. The fact-checking app might bring up the result of a link to a news story tuition proposal for a 20 percent increase, a proposal which later fails. The facts and numbers look the same on the surface, but one small element changes the situation entirely. A fact-checking app can make the process easier, but a human still has to be on the other end, making sure the results are logical and relevant.

Besides just checking facts and grammar, copy editors ask the question — does this make sense? Do the facts presented make sense in context of each other?

A program cannot read an article for clarity or logic. A program doesn’t read with an audience in mind. A program is simply reading the letters and words alone, all implications and subtleties are lost. Until we can write a script to read for continuity and understanding, the work of a good copy editor cannot be replaced by an app.

That’s not to say that such applications don’t have a place in the future of copy editing. There’s no doubt that such programs have the potential to vastly improve the accuracy of publications and catch errors than a human would simply miss. The key is integrating developing technology with the existing system to produce more accurate and precise editing.

Student guest post: Ensuring accuracy off the field

Students in JOMC 457, Advanced Editing, are writing guest posts for this blog this semester. This is the first of those posts. Alexa Burrell is a senior majoring in editing and graphic design. She is from Aurora, Colo., and is interested in working in sports communication after graduation from UNC-Chapel Hill.

It was tough week for sports journalists.

Not only did Lance Armstrong admit to doping after years of denial, but Deadspin also uncovered that the heartwarming and inspirational story of Manti Te’o and his deceased girlfriend was a hoax. During the college football season, several reliable journalists and publications continued to spread the story, seemingly without checking the facts. As the story continues to unfold, one of the biggest questions is, how did journalists and editors not catch this?

Sports journalism differs from other types of journalism because of its high entertainment value. Sports writers often look for stories or narratives that can turn a simple game into a display of an individual’s passion and personal struggle. While those stories are captivating, accuracy still needs to take precedence when writing and editing pieces.

Here are some of my tips as a sports journalist for keeping the narrative, but maintaining accuracy:

Back up your sources’ claims with documentation. Most of what was reported about Lennay Kekua could have been checked with documentation. Documents could have — and should have — been recovered for everything from where she attended school, to her tragic car accident and even her death. No other writer seemed to think to do what Timothy Burke and Jack Dickey did — check the sources. A couple of Google searches, phone calls to Stanford University and requests for records let the Deadspin writers have what is an even “juicer” story than the alleged tragedy.

Talk to teammates. As the story continued to develop, it was revealed that several teammates knew Kekua was not Te’o’s girlfriend. Why weren’t the teammates asked about her in the first place? Not only would a teammate’s perspective enhance the narrative, but reporters might find out more information by asking the locker room how a particular event has affected and individual’s play and, perhaps, personal life.

Be skeptical. When reporting on a game, sports journalists have it easy. There are replays, statistics and detailed records for each player’s performance on the field. However, off the playing field is a different story, and every bit of information presented can’t be taken as fact.  If anything, the magnitude of attention and criticism the media has garnered from this incident will hopefully increase journalists’ skepticism and efforts when checking for accuracy.

Bring it back to the basics. In the digital age of journalism, not all journalists are trained to adhere to news values. But it was a blog that broke the hoax in the first place. Even though sports journalism is not as “serious” as other types of reporting, remember to maintain and adhere to news values.

The story of Te’o shook the world of sports journalism this week. The failure to check for accuracy has become a story of a much larger magnitude than the original narrative, and from this, sports journalists should remember accuracy is important in any type of reporting.

Q&A with Reid Serozi of Triangle Wiki

Reid Serozi is a project organizer of Triangle Wiki, an encyclopedia-style website about the Research Triangle region of North Carolina. In this interview, conducted by email, Serozi discusses what’s behind the project and how Triangle residents can contribute to it.

Q. What is the purpose of Triangle Wiki, and what is your role in it?

A. Triangle Wiki is a grassroots, open-source movement powered by LocalWiki software to provide a free, openly editable, community-centric website for local history, media, opinions, interesting characters and everything else about the Triangle region (Raleigh-Durham).

Triangle Wiki may seem old school as it provides a single place on the Web where local knowledge can be documented and preserved for the future. By no means does the Triangle Wiki Web platform feel old school with the powerful editing capabilities and beautiful editable maps that give a sense of place to each wiki page.

My involvement with Triangle Wiki started in 2011 as a project organizer when I pitched the idea to start a local wiki effort to group of talented Raleigh civic geeks. My responsibilities today are spread across contributing content, actively managing an online wiki community, developing marketing campaigns and planting new local wiki communities in the many different towns and universities within the Triangle region.

Q. What advice do you have for people who want to contribute as writers and editors?

A. Ask yourself what things, places or people do you value the most in your community. Those are potential wiki pages you might find yourself having the greatest knowledge of and desire to contribute toward.

Don’t worry about being formal, asking for permission or producing structured content at first. Visit the wiki and make a few edits on existing wiki pages to get your feet wet.

If a page doesn’t exist, then create one and add a photo or a few lines of content to get the page seeded. Share the page with friends and ask them to contribute what they know.

Don’t focus on high-level contributions like a page about Durham. Triangle Wiki is place to capture the many unique, hidden and wonderful things that make the Triangle what it is.

Q. On occasion, Wikipedia has faced criticism regarding its credibility and accuracy. How does Triangle Wiki ensure that it’s a reliable, trustworthy resource?

A. For starters, did I mention anyone can edit Triangle Wiki?

The criticism we hear the most about Wikipedia is the barriers to entry are too high and the contributors are not even from the local area. You will see Raleigh’s Pullen Park Wikipedia page being updated from people in Chicago.

Triangle Wiki is taking a different approach to making sure it’s a reliable resource, which means allowing content to be subject to a crowdsourced hyperlocal forum. The visitors and contributors are gonna be mainly people from the local community. These are your neighbors, public servants and the same people you stop along a greenway to ask for directions. This same audience is going to have a greater incentive to make sure information about their community is helpful for others.

Q. With the rise of social media, we live in an increasingly crowded world of online information. What is the future of the wiki format fit in that environment?

A. Today, local knowledge is easily shared by the minute within a community in the form of fragmented small digital bits for a short attention span audience. The majority of that local knowledge is shared globally across commercially driven digital media services.

The local wiki is noncommercial and built for the long term by local contributors who love their communities. The local wiki space will eventually fill a void for existing and future hyperlocal blog content.

Generally, hyperlocal blogs are geared toward niche audiences focused around a city, town or neighborhood district that tends to be operated by one or two local volunteers. The hyperlocal blog model is not always sustainable.

There is a tremendous amount of work that goes into a frequent published blog, and the authors eventually move on in life. What happens to those outstanding retired online resources? What if we could shift those publishers toward an open, local wiki model where the content and collaborative contributors will continue for life?

Follow Triangle Wiki on Twitter and contribute to the site.

The top posts of 2012

This blog will be on a holiday hiatus this month.

In the media’s tradition of year-end lists, I offer the most popular posts of 2012, as clicked on and read by you. Thanks for reading, and see you in 2013.

10. Q&A with Elizabeth Hudson of Our State magazine

9. Student guest post: The Man Repeller kicks it up a notch

8. My nominee for best correction ever

7. A gap in Gingrich coverage

6. Mitt Romney, headline writer

5. Charlotte still needs N.C. — for now

4. What I am teaching this semester

3. Debunking a headline myth

2. From spelling and grammar to usage and grammar

1. What Abe Simpson yelled at

Q&A with Scott Butterworth, editorial copy chief at The Washington Post

Scott Butterworth is editorial copy chief at The Washington Post. He has also worked as a night editor and copy chief of the newspaper’s Style section. In this Q&A, conducted by email, Butterworth talks about his job managing the Editorial copy desk at the Post.

Q. Describe your job. What is your typical day like?

A. I lead a team of seven multiplatform editors (the Post’s term for what used to be called copy editors) who deal solely with copy from the Editorial department. Collectively, we edit, fact-check, headline and publish some 50 articles daily, material that includes op-eds, columns, editorials, blog postings and letters to the editor.

We staff from 7 a.m. to 9 p.m., and the day begins and ends with blog postings. Editorial has six blogs that are updated several times through the day. Letters to the editor are typically ready for editing by 9 a.m., op-eds and columns beginning at noon, and editorials at 5 p.m. We start laying out the editorial and op-ed newspaper pages at mid-afternoon and distribute proofs by 6:30 p.m. We typeset the pages around 7:30 p.m.

All of this material is published online as soon as it is ready, with one exception: Syndicated columns, which make up the majority of our op-ed pages, are generally embargoed from the Web until 8 p.m.

(Separate from the multiplatform crew, Editorial has a day online editor who triages the incoming copy, monitors what online audiences are gravitating toward and suggests what should be prioritized to address this appetite, and an online producer/editor. Together, they craft a plan for presenting and promoting our pieces.)

My day runs from noon to 8 p.m. Monday to Friday. I assign articles to the MPEs so that we wind up with neither backlogs nor editors twiddling their thumbs, I slot all stories headed into the paper (blog postings are not slotted), and I grab blog postings as I can.

I also handle longer-range duties: managing team members’ performance; looking ahead for opportunities our department should pursue and threats we should mind; and representing the desk in discussions throughout the department and the newsroom.

Q. How is editing opinion pieces different from editing news?

A. The gist of the job is the same: We are the reader’s surrogate. It is our job to untangle clunky or confusing sentences and to clarify what the writer intends to say. We also challenge the facts in each piece with the recurring question: How do you know that?

We follow the guidance of Daniel Patrick Moynihan: “Everyone is entitled to his own opinion but not his own facts.” Any good editorial or op-ed is, at its heart, an argument supported by facts. If the foundation proves less than sturdy, the opinion becomes rickety and unpersuasive. So it is in both our interest and the writer’s to ensure that the facts are as she describes them.

The twist in the job comes when the writer segues to her opinions. Our interest in plain speaking continues, but we must take care that, in clearing away brambles, we don’t cut away something more significant. So rather than rewrite first and ask later, as news desks may do on deadline, we raise questions with the writer (often proposing alternative language) and wait for a reply before taking out the shears.

We also aim to channel the writer when writing headlines. The goal is a headline that summarizes the article not only in a like spirit but also in such a way to entice even those who oppose this point of view to read it.

Q. How has the rise of digital media changed headline writing for opinion pieces?

A. It requires us to get to the point quickly — to be direct and descriptive — with our online heads. Often, nuance goes by the boards. Web audiences are hungry for smart, well-founded opinion and analysis, but they do gravitate toward starkly worded headlines, full of superlatives and usually beginning with one of the five W’s or the H.

That recipe can feel mighty limiting sometimes, especially when (for SEO purposes) you add a proper name to the front of the headline and you keep it all to less than 60 characters (at which point Google loses interest). So why do it this way? We don’t always, but we’ve found that resisting this formula creates a headwind in getting online attention.

We encourage our MPEs in writing Web heads to focus less on what happened and more on what it means. Where it makes sense, we also “steal” a writer’s lead or kicker — an approach that is bad manners in print but has proven particularly successful in attracting online aggregators such as the Drudge Report and RealClearPolitics.

Our content management system also allows us to write different headlines for different audiences. For example, we routinely write four heads for columns: one that aims primarily at Google search, one for Google News (whose spiders scrape differently than do main Google’s), one that goes out to social networks and our RSS feeds, and one for print. All four will be closely related, and one or two might be identical, but this way we have the ability to offer more directly what a given audience might want.

Q. In an increasingly digital world, what do you see as the role of opinion writing at large news organizations like the Post? What does the future hold for the syndicated columnist?

A. These are good questions, and they tie into those threats I mentioned earlier.

Opinion writing certainly faces the potential of being commoditized, as news reporting has been already. After all, “Opinions are like belly buttons: Everyone has one.”

Through blogs and social media, technology has lowered the bar to publish and draw attention to opinion pieces, in a manner similar to what we’ve already seen with YouTube. So now you can find an almost endless stream of commentary on any issue you might name. (Khoi Vinh makes an interesting argument for punditry’s vulnerability to disruption.)

The Post defends against this by relying on such differentiators as authority and reputation, which readers have shown they value when deciding where to click. (An analogy might be Tiffany’s vs. Internet jewelry sales.)

We also have a built-in advantage: our location. We’re fortunate to be in a city where the battle of ideas is waged daily; if you’re interested in serious analysis of these issues, or in influencing the debate, The Post’s op-ed page (whether print or online) is an essential read.

This gives us a platform from which to suggest to thinkers and statesmen that they might want to write for The Post. This, in turn, gives us a leg up online in competing for readers, at least for that subset of readers that pays attention to the byline before clicking.

Column writing is underappreciated as a differentiator. If you asked a random passer-by to name a writer at The Washington Post, odds are you would hear George Will, Charles Krauthammer or Gene Robinson named, rather than one of our news reporters.

This stems in no small part from their television appearances rather than their written work, to be sure, but the invitation for those appearances rests on the authority of being a Post columnist, of implicitly being someone in the know. The Post benefits, too: Its reputation grows as the place to get more of such smart analysis.

So I’m very optimistic about the future of opinion writing at The Post and at the handful of other organizations that also see it as a core part of their business. It enables us to develop and maintain loyalty among our primary readership and, when Drudge lights the siren over a given piece, to expand our audience further.

I’m less certain about the future of syndication. The economic model still makes sense for client papers: It is cheaper for the Houston Chronicle to pay to run Kathleen Parker’s columns than to find and develop an in-house columnist for that space on the print op-ed page. And holding the rights for certain syndicated columns remains no less important in some markets than having certain comic strips.

As long as newspapers continue to provide op-ed pages, I see syndication playing a large role in filling that space. But I worry about how long that relationship will continue: Op-ed pages would seem to be an easy target for publishers looking to cut news hole further.

And the Internet has broken down the presumption of the syndication model for sponsoring papers: cultivating exclusivity through the sale of rights. Now you can read most syndicated columnists at a variety of web sites, so why should I go to The New York Times — where I have to pay money — to read Maureen Dowd?

I don’t know how this story ends, but there clearly is trouble on the horizon.

Follow Scott Butterworth on Twitter.

My nominee for the best correction ever

What is the best correction ever run in a newspaper? It’s an informal competition, with no objective way to determine a winner.

This one brought “My Little Pony” and The New York Times together to comical effect. And this one about a potentially druggy drummer has made the rounds on social media several times over the past month.

My nominee comes from The News & Observer. Earlier this week, the Raleigh paper published an editorial about bluegrass music. Here’s how the top of the editorial appeared:

The name of the band was the Dillards, not the Dullards. That simple misspelling turns the word into an insult.

It’s a particularly embarrassing error for the N&O because of the North Carolina connection to “The Andy Griffith Show.” The newspaper’s columnists have frequently referred to the show over the years, and Raleigh was mentioned and portrayed in some episodes.

The N&O ran this correction today. It hits the right notes of regret, humility and chagrin. That’s about all you can do with this sort of error: chuckle, correct and move on. A bit of bluegrass courtesy of the Dullards Dillards might help too.

Guest post: Advanced fact checking for advanced editors

Stephanie Willen Brown is the director of the Park Library at the School of Journalism and Mass Communication at UNC-Chapel Hill. In this post, she offers some tips for editors fact-checking stories about North Carolina communities.

I had the great pleasure of demonstrating some advanced fact-checking tools for Andy’s JOMC 457 students/editors. As our students have hundreds of terrific resources available to them, the first thing I did was create a web page of UNC and North Carolina resources relevant to their needs.

The biggest fact-checking tool is a good, local librarian who can help editors and reporters find reliable data sources for local topics. In the case of JOMC 457, that local librarian is me, so I selected some North Carolina government resources helpful relevant to coverage of Durham and Carrboro.

First up, the North Carolina Secretary of State’s Corporation Search. From here, you can get annual reports from North Carolina companies, which will help you find when they were incorporated and who their directors are. You could also go fishing for a story by searching the companies created or dissolved in the past month, by county.

Another handy local tool is the Durham (NC) Crime Mapper; you can get data for such crimes as arson, assault, burglary, homicide, larceny, motor vehicle theft, robbery and rape. Search by address, police district, or citywide. We wondered in class about the police district breakdowns, and here is a PDF map of the districts.

Many states and counties have similar tools — both for finding corporation information within a state and for finding crime data by town and neighborhood. Check with your local librarian to see if what’s available in your area.

I also showed the student editors some national tools that provide census data down to the local level. American Factfinder is my favorite of these; it will give you 2010 census data at the state, county, town, and even neighborhood level. One interesting piece of comparative data is the number of people using public transportation to get to work: In Carrboro, in 2010, 1,750 indicated they did so, or 16.3% of the population; in Durham, in 2010, 3,892 did so, or 3.1% of the population.

Finally, I showed some sources for confirming facts. We UNC folks have online access to a directory called the Encyclopedia of Associations, which will help editors and reporters find experts in a variety of areas, such as SEEDS, which helps “neighborhoods and communities create sustainable green spaces for gardening, gathering and education.”

The book “Famous First Facts” was the big hit with the class — it would be a great resource to settle bar bets, as one student suggested. It offers answers to questions you didn’t know you had, such first “chemotherapy to successfully achieve remission of cancer;” the first Spider-Man comic-book; and the first “chess grandmaster who was African-American” (answers here, or in your library). This book is in over 2,000 libraries across the United States, and it was one of the first books I purchased for my newspaper library back in 1996 (I served as library director for a newspaper in Springfield, Mass., then the Springfield Union-News, online now as MassLive).

The big takeaway for these editors is: Librarians are a great resource for journalists. I hope students will consult the library resource page I created for them, and I look forward to working with them in person as they edit the Carrboro Commons and the Durham Voice this semester.

Read Stephanie Willen Brown’s blog and follow her on Twitter.

Q&A with N&Oops

N&Oops is a blog and Twitter feed that launched this autumn to document mistakes in The News & Observer of Raleigh, N.C. The blog’s anonymous author is a “former journalist who left newspapers voluntarily several years ago and harbors no bitterness toward the industry.” In this Q&A, conducted by email, N&Oops discusses what inspired the blog’s origins and goals.

Q. What is the purpose of your blog, and what inspired it?

A. Basically the purpose of the blog is to point out obvious errors in the N&O, especially the ones that are amusing. For the purpose of the blog, an “obvious error” would be one that could be spotted with doing little or no research.

It’s also somewhat of a social media experiment and something to do for fun. The “Wake Cunty” error was the one that helped push it from an idea to reality.

Q. What types of errors do you see? Are themes emerging?

A. There seem to be a lot of errors in captions and subheadlines. The sports section also seems to have more errors than other sections, probably due to tighter deadlines.

Q. You’ve noted errors in email alerts from newsobserver.com and Tweets from N&O writers and editors. Do you think those should be held to the same standard as what appears in print?

A. Errors are errors and typos are typos, regardless of the medium. Readers expect the N&O to have names spelled accurately and correct punctuation, even in tweets and alerts.

Q. Your blog and Twitter feed allow you to remain anonymous. Do you see a time when you would identify yourself?

A. Likely not, as this is intended to be contributor-driven. So far, there have been contributions from at least 10 different people.

Q. What do you see as the endgame for the blog? In other words, is there a “mission accomplished”?

A. No endgame. How long posting keeps up at the current pace depends mostly on contributor submissions and the volume of errors.

William Tecumseh Sherman, media critic

While working on this tongue-in-cheek post earlier this week, I ran across a few quotes from Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman about newspapers.

Apparently, the Civil War commander who famously (or infamously, depending on your viewpoint) marched across the South was not a fan of the press. Here are the quotes attributed to Sherman:

• “I hate newspapermen. They come into camp and pick up their camp rumors and print them as facts. I regard them as spies, which, in truth, they are.”

• “If I had my choice, I would kill every reporter in the world, but I am sure we would be getting reports from hell before breakfast.”

• “I think I understand what military fame is — to be killed on the field of battle and have your name misspelled in the newspapers.”

Read more of Sherman’s colorful quotes on other topics here.