I begin today with a marvelous bit of insight: The letters “i” and “o” are located right next to each other on a keyboard.
So if you’re expecting me to join in piling on Action News today for their unfortunate misspelling of the word “shot” — a real shot-show of snark that’s dominated social media the past couple of days — sorry. There but for the slip of a finger go I.
It’s a funny thing, catching other people’s mistakes. And I know a lot about mistakes, having made so many of them myself the past 44 years.
The reactions can be even more fascinating than the original mistake itself.
First, about this particular mistake. Action News, which I consider to be a fantastic small-market local TV station, had a story about the search for a suspect in a local shooting. The words splashed across the screen read “shots fired suspect search.”
Only, it didn’t say “shot.”
The online shotstorm that followed was as predictable as it was ugly.
“Why doesn’t anyone proofread this stuff before it goes on the air?” “What a bunch of idiots!” “What, doesn’t anyone there give a shot anymore?”
Again, I’m pretty familiar with those kinds of comments because I’ve had them directed at me so often. In fact, I’ve been asked “How did that mistake happen?” so many times, I finally came up with what I think is the perfect answer: “A human being was sitting in front of a keyboard.”
These days, I’ll usually add some more words, such as “…while trying to do a job three people were probably doing a few years ago, and in half the time, too.”
Not unlike newspapers, local TV stations are operating on razor-thin budgets these days, and employees are carrying heavier workloads than ever before, under unforgiving deadlines. Now, with that reality, imagine a profession where every mistake you make is on public display for everyone to laugh at, with screengrabs and sharing multiplying the visibility of your error to audiences far greater than the 99.9% of the jobs you do right.
Granted, as I often remind my staff and myself, it doesn’t take any longer to spell things correctly than it did to get them wrong in the first place. But, being human, we’re still going to screw up sometimes.
We’re flying without a safety net these days, folks. Contrary to popular opinion, there is no such thing as a full time “proofreader” in our industries and there hasn’t been for probably 40 years. Even then, mistakes got into the paper, and onto your TV screen, too. That’s never going to change for as long as our local communities are fortunate enough to have our vital — albeit imperfect — work being performed by actual human beings.
So, when this kind of shot goes down, be it on TV or any newspaper, I’ll be the first to admit I’m not surprised. What surprises me is that it doesn’t happen more often.
Now, back to the reaction. In my view, the most unfortunate part about this episode is the fact that somebody got shot at, and there’s a suspect on the loose, and for a change, nobody’s talking about it. (Which, ironically, has led to a nice reprieve from the usual gaggle of groupthink that fills so much of our social media space these days — and by the way, if you really want to see some outlets where bad grammar and misspelled words rule the day, have I got some suggestions for you!)
Personally, I’ve never let a “sh-t” into print, and yes, I’ve caught a few along the way. Others on our staff have as well, just as I’m sure people at Action News catch mistakes before they go on the air all the time. But that’s the thing: Nobody knows about the many errors that get fixed because nobody ever sees them. They only see the minuscule percentage of things that get missed. Such is the glory of our professions.
I recently got a nasty hand-written letter ripping me asunder for all of the errors that slip into our paper. I think the nicest thing the writer called me was “illiterate.” The meanest words were, well, less suitable for print than some of the sh-t you’ve seen on TV lately. I do remember it included the line, “You need to pay closer attention and get things right for a change.”
The letter was addressed to “Mark Wilcox, editor.”
I didn’t bother responding. After all, shot happens.
Mike Wolcott is the editor of the Enterprise-Record. He can be reached at mwolcott@chicoer.com.