January 9, 2015

This Is One of the Worst Retractions a Newspaper Has Ever Had to Publish


The News-Enterprise in Elizabethtown, Kentucky, had a story on its front page today that paraphrased a local police official as saying that most cops typically go into law enforcement “because they have a desire to shoot minorities.” Spicy stuff! Only problem: It never happened.

The paper quickly issued a retraction on its home page and updated the online version of the story—ironically headlined “Law enforcement to be honored for service”—to include a formal apology from editor Ben Sheroan. The corrected story now reads: “Hardin County Sheriff John Ward said those who go into the law enforcement profession typically do it because they have a desire to serve the community.”

So what happened? The paper initially called it a “typographical mistake” but that obviously didn’t make any sense. Jim Romenesko reports that it was actually a joke mistake. “One [copy desk staffer] wrote the ‘shoot minorities’ line on the page proof as a joke and the second—in charge of the front page—put it in the story.”

Never joke on the page proofs.

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THE FACTS SPEAK FOR THEMSELVES.

At least we hope they will, because that’s our approach to raising the $350,000 in online donations we need right now—during our high-stakes December fundraising push.

It’s the most important month of the year for our fundraising, with upward of 15 percent of our annual online total coming in during the final week—and there’s a lot to say about why Mother Jones’ journalism, and thus hitting that big number, matters tremendously right now.

But you told us fundraising is annoying—with the gimmicks, overwrought tone, manipulative language, and sheer volume of urgent URGENT URGENT!!! content we’re all bombarded with. It sure can be.

So we’re going to try making this as un-annoying as possible. In “Let the Facts Speak for Themselves” we give it our best shot, answering three questions that most any fundraising should try to speak to: Why us, why now, why does it matter?

The upshot? Mother Jones does journalism you don’t find elsewhere: in-depth, time-intensive, ahead-of-the-curve reporting on underreported beats. We operate on razor-thin margins in an unfathomably hard news business, and can’t afford to come up short on these online goals. And given everything, reporting like ours is vital right now.

If you can afford to part with a few bucks, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones with a much-needed year-end donation. And please do it now, while you’re thinking about it—with fewer people paying attention to the news like you are, we need everyone with us to get there.

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