Blog readers make lousy editors

Before plopping my behind on the blog bandwagon in January 2006, I would ask other journalist/bloggers how it was that posts could go from a blogger's fingertips to a reader's eyes without so much as passing within sniffing distance of an editor's nose. Having been an editor and writer for 30 years, I found the idea - now a daily practice - tantamount to leaping from an airplane buck naked.

Oh, don't fret, Mr. Old School, these experienced bloggers would tell me, because blog readers out there on the omniscient Internet will trip over each other in a race to point out your mistakes, much the same way a pilot would surely discourage the nude passenger from jumping sans parachute. Readers are the new editors. And editors are the new village smithies.

Know what? I can tell you from experience now that it happens just as those sage bloggers had described ... eventually ... every once in awhile.

Oh, sure, readers will let you know lickety-split that you erred if you write that the proper tool for dousing an electrical fire is your garden-variety water hose. They'll let you know, and let you know, and let you know.

Misspell Tucson, however, and it might be a week before some Arizonan or geography bee champion gets around to sending you a head-slap via e-mail.

Don't get the wrong idea: Any and all mistakes on this blog are the exclusive property and responsibility of the blog owner. Same for corrections. All I'm saying is that the promise of an army of reader/editors having your back like the network horde on those Verizon Wireless commercials has proven to be about as accurate as a carrier's claim to offer "unlimited" bandwidth.

As noted, blog readers are champs when it comes to dancing upon a major screw-up (See: garden hose, electrical fire), but a typo, botched name or a missing word - the professional editor's bread and butter - are most often quietly accepted if noticed at all. Here's the first sentence of an item I filed at 6:20 a.m. on Wednesday, Oct. 24:

"New York State has given Verizon Wireless a million new reasons understand that the word 'unlimited' when used in advertising should mean what it means elsewhere in polite society."

Doh, I left out a word - the "to" between "reasons" and "understand." These things happen, especially when blogging at 6 in the morning. But it took a full 10 hours for anyone to bring the error to my attention ... and in this case that anyone turned out to be me.

In the meantime, a few thousand people - including, I presume, a fair number of my colleagues - had read the mangled sentence without taking a moment to give me a shout.

Then there was the Edwards for President T-shirt kerfuffle. On Sept. 24, someone - an anonymous Texas mom - wrote on an Edwards campaign blog that her son had received an in-school suspension simply for wearing an Edwards T-shirt. The predictable blogosphere brouhaha ensued.

By Sept. 28, I was ready to weigh in, not so much about the issue of school dress codes vs. the First Amendment, but whether or not the post from the "Texas mom" was in fact about a real-life incident. Oh, I left myself oodles of wiggle room, but there was no mistaking my skepticism because I had simply been unable to find a single news media or blog account of the controversy outside of that initial bit.

As you might suspect, it turns out that my suspicions were unfounded, but it took until Oct. 4 for a reader to point out a TV news story about the matter ... and that story didn't even air until Oct. 3.

Yes, there are readers and colleagues who are not shy about pointing out errors in Buzzblog - many thanks to all of you. And my wife's good about flagging my mistakes (aren't all spouses?). But she was a full-time editor before becoming a full-time herder of triplets, so it comes to her more naturally than your typical blog reader.

By now some of you are asking the obvious question: If editing matters so much, why not have an editor read your stuff before posting?

Answer: There are too many posts, too few editors, and too great of a need for speed - the importance of immediacy cannot be overstated when publishing on the 'Net. Yes, the latter is a business/competitive consideration that not everyone - including not every journalist - will find compelling.

I've come to accept the occasional uncorrected mistake as a reasonable price to pay.

And, as noted, readers do indeed help fill the editing void ... sometimes.

Of course, not every correction offered by a reader turns out to be correct. There was the time that I responded to security expert Bruce Schneier's post in which he posited that our nation may be stuck with "cover your ass security." Wrote Schneier: "Sadly, though, there might not be a solution. All the money is in fearmongering, re-election strategies and pork-barrel politics. And, like so many things, security follows the money."

My reply: "OK, he may be right. But, let's presume for a moment that he's not. Let's presume something can be done. In the immortal words, of Bluto Blutarsky: 'Over? ... Was it over when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor? Hell no!' "

Offered a helpful reader: "The Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor."

Then four other readers jumped all over that guy - who clearly has never seen "Animal House" - as though he had suggested putting out an electrical fire with a garden hose.

But you get my point.