Routine callers help keep us on our toes
As Reader Representative, I have a group of people who call or e-mail me fairly regularly, whom I refer to, logically, as my "regulars."
They are mostly older, mostly male, and usually right. At least a couple are, predictably, former teachers. At least one, also predictably, is an engineer. (We all know about those engineers, right?)
When I came in Monday morning, I had four calls from one of them – three about errors in our paper and a fourth telling me he was wrong about one error.
I once returned a call from one of the regulars and got his wife instead. She was somewhat embarrassed about the mistake her husband had called to my attention and was (I hope pleasantly) surprised when I told her I enjoyed his calls and was glad he took the time to let us know when we make a mistake.
It’s not that we don’t hate every mistake we make, but knowing about them helps us not only correct them, but possibly prevent future mistakes.
Sometimes, rather than an error, the call might be about a matter of opinion. We journalists tend to, at least sometimes, break a few rules that English teachers feel fairly strong about. (Like ending sentences with prepositions.)
On occasion, they will test my knowledge and my research skills by questioning something that seems wrong, but actually is right. I wrote about such an event this time last year in the final entry of the October 2007 blog archive.
The regular callers or e-mailers have long-developed habits of doing exactly what we’ve tried to get our young readers to do. They are engaged and invested in what they consider to be "their" newspaper. In the same way other readers might type in anonymous comments to an on-line story, these readers share their thoughts with me. They aren’t different, they just prefer a face and a voice to a computer screen, and there’s certainly nothing wrong with that. We’ll take communication in any form we can get it and appreciate those who make the effort.
They are mostly older, mostly male, and usually right. At least a couple are, predictably, former teachers. At least one, also predictably, is an engineer. (We all know about those engineers, right?)
When I came in Monday morning, I had four calls from one of them – three about errors in our paper and a fourth telling me he was wrong about one error.
I once returned a call from one of the regulars and got his wife instead. She was somewhat embarrassed about the mistake her husband had called to my attention and was (I hope pleasantly) surprised when I told her I enjoyed his calls and was glad he took the time to let us know when we make a mistake.
It’s not that we don’t hate every mistake we make, but knowing about them helps us not only correct them, but possibly prevent future mistakes.
Sometimes, rather than an error, the call might be about a matter of opinion. We journalists tend to, at least sometimes, break a few rules that English teachers feel fairly strong about. (Like ending sentences with prepositions.)
On occasion, they will test my knowledge and my research skills by questioning something that seems wrong, but actually is right. I wrote about such an event this time last year in the final entry of the October 2007 blog archive.
The regular callers or e-mailers have long-developed habits of doing exactly what we’ve tried to get our young readers to do. They are engaged and invested in what they consider to be "their" newspaper. In the same way other readers might type in anonymous comments to an on-line story, these readers share their thoughts with me. They aren’t different, they just prefer a face and a voice to a computer screen, and there’s certainly nothing wrong with that. We’ll take communication in any form we can get it and appreciate those who make the effort.
posted by Sheila Friedeck at 3:40 PM
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