Hour cover story on Ravi Coltrane; Explainer archives

Hourravicover
It's almost the most wonderful time of the year here in Montreal. The Jazz Festival kicks off next week and Just for Laughs begins soon after. Not only do I love both of these festivals, it also means some really fun work for me with Hour, the Montreal weekly I write the Explainer column for. I know, I haven't updated my Explainers in a while, but here's some good news: You can read every recent Explainer by going to my online archives here. I know, it's almost too much to handle at once. Deep breaths...

I was lucky enough to write the cover story for Hour's Jazz Fest issue this week, and it's about Ravi Coltrane. (Yes, John Coltrane is his father.) Ravi was in a bit of a hurry when we spoke last Saturday morning (he was taking his kids to a baseball game), but he was a very laid back guy to interview. I was particularly excited to hear him tell me about playing with Elvin Jones, one of my all time favorite drummers. (I saw him do a solo show in Montreal a few years back and got to shake his hand afterward. He almost crushed mine; it was awesome.) Jones played a big role in helping a young Ravi develop as a musician.

I've pasted a short excerpt from the article below, and you can read the full piece here.

It was 1990 in California, and Ravi Coltrane had a secret.

Elvin
Jones, the muscular, polyrhythmic drummer who was the driving force
behind saxophonist John Coltrane's legendary quartet, was in town for a
show. It had been years since he played on the West Coast, and Ravi
Coltrane, the then-25-year-old son of the famous saxophonist, spent
time with Jones, hanging out at the venue and heading to music stores.
"You know, doing the things that musicians do," Coltrane says by phone
from a New York City cab. (It's Saturday and he's taking his kids to a
Mets game.)

Coltrane's secret was that he had started playing the
saxophone a few years earlier. He chose not to tell Jones, but word got
out anyway.

"By the end of the week he found out I was playing,"
Coltrane says. "Then months later he called me and asked if I was
available to do some gigs. I told him that, yeah, maybe in a year
because I'm still in school, I'm not ready."

Coltrane was at the
California Institute of the Arts studying music, but as he
self-deprecatingly describes, "I could barely string two notes
together. I can do three or four now." Coltrane came to the music late,
but Jones wanted to make sure he benefited from an appropriate
apprenticeship. Still, the young saxophonist with the famous name was
hesitant.

"I was an Elvin fan and I didn't want me having the
name Coltrane to be a distraction for me and the other guys in the
band," he says. "I try to avoid that whole 'Coltrane' thing. It was
never an angle for me."

Jones said he wanted him in the band in four months' time.

"Elvin doesn't take no for an answer," laughs Coltrane. "He said, 'I want to help you.' You don't say no to Elvin."

...

June 22, 2006 | Filed Under Explainer, Feature articles, Hour, Newspaper articles | Comments Off 

Awful gotcha reporting; poor public editing

Huffpo
I recently published two commentaries on The Huffington Post.

The first was about Dateline NBC's awful "To Catch a Predator" series and why it's not really investigative journalism. The column also talks about Carl Monday, whom I consider to be the most prolific gotcha television reporter working in North America. That's not a good thing.

The second column compares current New York Times Public Editor Byron Calame to his predecessor, Daniel Okrent. Calame has started to catch heat from media critics and commentators and I add my take on his disappointing performance.

June 22, 2006 | Filed Under Columns, Huffington Post | Comments Off 

Regret and the Weekly Standard

Weeklystanard
The "Scrapbook" column in the June 5 edition of The Weekly Standard took note of a recent article I published on Regret. In this post, I made note of the media's all too frequent description of Dr. James Dobson as a reverend/pastor/minister. He's not. From the Standard:

Dr. Dobson, We Presume
A
tip of The Scrapbook's hat to regrettheerror.com, the always invaluable
blog devoted to media retractions, for its recent discovery of a
fascinating--and apparently quite longstanding and
entrenched--phenomenon involving Focus on the Family chairman James
Dobson. Here's a taste:

A May 14 article
about Sen. John McCain's speech at Liberty University incorrectly
referred to the chairman of Focus on the Family as the Rev. James
Dobson. Dobson is not an ordained minister.

--correction in the May 16 Washington Post

In
the May 10 edition of "Heard on the Hill," James Dobson of Focus on the
Family was misidentified as a reverend. He has a Ph.D. from the
University of Southern California in the field of child development.

--correction in the May 11 Roll Call

A
headline April 20 with a story about the 70th birthday of Dr. James
Dobson misidentified him as an evangelist. A child psychologist and
best-selling author, he is the founder and chairman of Focus on Family,
a nonprofit Christian ministry that helps families.

--correction in the April 27 San Diego Union-Tribune

Craig Silverman
of regrettheerror.com reports that at least 18 different American
newspapers and magazines have run one or another version of this same
mistake since 1989. Curiouser still, five of those publications--the
Washington Post, Newsweek, the Wall Street Journal, the Kansas City
Star, and the Chicago Tribune--have done it twice apiece.

June 18, 2006 | Filed Under Regret the Error Press | Comments Off 

HuffPo, yo

Huffington
Just over a year into its run, The Huffington Post has turned out to be quite the success. On Wednesday it launched a new section called Eat the Press. It features media news and press criticism from writers, bloggers and other news sources. I'm pleased to say that I've been invited to contribute by Rachel Sklar, HuffPo's media editor. Rachel used to edit FishBowlNY, a media blog on MediaBistro, until she left and soon took this job. She was always an enthusiastic supporter of Regret the Error, and I enjoyed her work as well. And she's Canadian, which is always a bonus.
I wrote my first post for the site this week and you can read it here. It's about the recent onslaught of plagiarism, and plagiarism about plagiarism. I hope to be a regular contributor.

June 9, 2006 | Filed Under Columns, Huffington Post | Comments Off 

Regret clip from The Publisher, and the past

I have a new (to me) clip about Regret the Error to share. This time it's from The Publisher, the trade magazine of the Canadian Community
Newspapers Association. I did this interview a long time ago and the article appeared back in 2005, but I never saw it. So here we are.

    Montreal journalist Craig Silverman's web site is devoted to newspaper corrections

    Tuesday, July 05, 2005

    By Tiffany Conroy
    CCNA INFORMATION SYSTEMS COORDINATOR

    A journalist in Montreal is making sure the whole world knows when you’ve made a mistake. Not only is he pointing, he is also laughing.

    Craig Silverman, a writer and consultant in Montreal, is the editor of Regret the Error, a website dedicated to reporting "corrections, retractions, clarifications and trends regarding accuracy and honesty in the media."

    Silverman culls the corrections pages of newspapers and other news sources across North America and presents the more humourous and litigious tidbits for easy digestion at www.regrettheerror.com.

    There, readers are treated to all forms of errata, from not-so-innocent errors such as labelling innocent Chicago businessmen as mobsters, to the accidental dropping of letters that result in amusing typos.

    Silverman, whose work has appeared in national newspapers and magazines, is no stranger to errors himself.

    "Every human is fallible and I am no exception," admits Silverman. "Each week I run a listing of all the corrections I made to the site."

    His worst?

    "I would say one of my worst was referring to ‘Strunk & White’ as ‘Stunk & White,’" he said. Strunk & White are the original authors of the classic principles of grammar and style manual The Elements of Style. "That drew more than a few emails."

    Like the subtitle of Regret the Errors says, mistakes happen. However, the clippings’ accompanying commentary starts to get critical when a publication has reprinted rumour or hoaxes. Ever the entertainer, Silverman’s criticism remains sardonic rather than severe. While humour lightens the mood of his site, his real motivations are earnest.

    "Corrections are an important part of the media, yet, for the most part, they are hidden and ineffective," said Silverman, when explaining his motivation for creating the site. "Regret the Error not only points out the humorous corrections that run everyday in a variety of newspapers, but—I hope—also raises the profile of corrections and helps drive the media to a higher standard of accuracy and accountability."

    The continuing problem, in Silverman’s opinion, is that errors are given little to no prominence.

    "People simply aren’t getting the correct information, and I think that’s a monumental failure on the media’s part."

    So if apologizing is not enough, what can a media outlet do to make amends?

    "Don’t bury it, don’t hedge your apology," suggests Silverman, "and make sure that the correction is clear about what the mistake was, how it happened, and what the correct information is."

    Or better yet, check your facts before you print. Prevention, of course, is the best remedy.

    "There are simply too many errors in the mainstream media; the lame corrections that follow them only compound the problem and serve to further erode the public’s trust. We can and must do better."

    So watch out. Whether silly or serious, your mistakes might get lifted from the back pages of your newspaper to the front page of Silverman’s website.

June 3, 2006 | Filed Under Regret the Error Press | Comments Off