The Discipline of the Correction Log
Launch library · evergreen read
Keeping a running internal record of every correction issued, however minor, builds a resource that a publication can draw on when patterns start to emerge, such as a particular topic or a particular kind of source proving unreliable more often than any comparable alternative available at the time.
Without a log, institutional memory of past errors tends to fade quickly, which means the same avoidable mistake can recur years later simply because nobody currently on staff remembers it happened before, in a very similar form, at some earlier point in the publication's own history.
A well kept correction log also supports transparency efforts directly, providing the underlying data behind any broader claim a publication might want to make about its own overall accuracy or its improvement over time. Without this kind of record, any such claim rests on impression rather than evidence, which is a strange position for a publication built around the very idea of evidence to find itself in.