MediaBugs was originally proposed as an experiment in correcting errors in news coverage. But what, exactly, is an error?
We’ve concentrated our efforts on the notion of “correctable errors,” which means, primarily, errors of fact, or sometimes of context and emphasis.
A handful of our early bug reports have been more in the area of bad grammar, questionable sentence structure, cliched phrasing and so forth — the realm, traditionally, of copy-editing, an art and vocation that is, sadly but probably irreversibly, in decline.
Personally I would rather see MediaBugs reports concentrated more in the realm of errors than of copyediting. (For a different sort of experiment in collaborative online copyediting,but one that’s very much in the MediaBugs spirit, check out Goosegrade/Editz.) But we’re committed to being guided to some extent by our users as long as what they’re doing is roughly aligned with our project goals.
What do you think — should MediaBugs take on all sorts of small copyedits? Should it delete them and focus on the factual/substantive stuff? Or maybe accept the copyedits but somehow segregate them on the site?
Report an error
As a journalist who started during the advent of online news, I would value MediaBugs more for dealing strictly with facts, not grammar and word choice. If there is an exceptional grammatical error in the news that leads to profound factual misunderstanding, that might be a worthwhile error to address, here. But at least, I’d hope Media Bugs would create some sort of filter for correctable errors in the grammar category, and just ignore gripes about word choice that are a matter of opinion. Keep facts and discussion about them front and center, please. Let the grammarians go and occupy or gripe to sites meant to serve the purpose of advancing good style, syntax and the like. And let MediaBugs serve the purpose of advancing new journalism so that it can be thought of as good journalism itself, not just the stepchild of legacy, investigative and feature writers or producers who mattered.
I agree with Lora. MediaBugs should focus on factual errors. Of course, typos or poor grammar can result in factual errors — but a misplaced comma or inelegant sentence isn’t the kind of thing this project should focus on, IMO.
Please, factual errors only. I mean, one of the bug reports takes issue with a single inelegant word choice in a college newspaper article, written by a freshman. Who cares?
I agree that Media Bugs is most useful as a clearing house for real factual errors. However, if people continue to report significant numbers of grammatical errors, I would consider finding a home for them on the site. Perhaps you could treat them in a more fun, lighthearted way, in a place distinct from the real error reports. You could try it and ditch it if it doesn’t work out.
Not sure what kind of reporting numbers you’re seeing early. But I imagine that grammatical errors are naturally easier for people to spot. They’re sort of a low-hanging fruit for your error-reporting users. If you can find an appropriate way to manage grammatical errors on the site, maybe you’ll better engage the early users that are reporting them. They’ll become stronger advocates for the site.
Nobody uses a new service in exactly the ways its creators anticipate. Adapting to actual usage patterns rather than desired user patterns is often a key to success.
Hear hear JB! A separate section or even site, maybe a partnership with another blog that’s already strong on style and grammar (and hopefully, advancing literacy and language education) makes sense to me. Like Language Log?
http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/