New York Times May 24 front page

im gonna use this next time a parent or grandparent calls up all pissed off I added a vowel or transposed a couple letters in Johnny’s roundup highlight.

hey lady there’s names wrong on the Vietnam Wall wudda you want from me

 

I hero worship NYT at least as much as most, and probably more, and lord knows I fuck up all the time. But making that many mistakes is a serious problem.

The whole point of the project was accuracy. “ALL these people died from the virus, and see how they were real people.” So many we have a wall of uninterrupted text. THAT many dead people.

Except “all these people” weren’t dead from the virus so your big wall of text has holes in it, and it’s no longer a big wall of text. And you fuck up one of the first five or so names, one that’s going to catch everyone’s eye because he was in his 20s (surely why he was so high), AND, it’s apparently easily Google-able that he didn’t die from the virus, because I seem to have seen dozens of people who immediately did Google and disprove it.

If you can’t do it accurately, don’t do it. It’s a really poignant design. A great way from tell the story, IMO. If you can pull it off. If you can’t, it doesn’t work.

 

This. Especially because the "self-slurping"piece never explained the A#1 burning question: how they determined the order of the names. It was finally-finally-finally explained in the teeny print at the very end, near the list of the sources.

 

Accuracy wasn't the overarching point, and I'd argue it hasn't been the point, at the NYT in awhile. There are tons of great people who still work there; I know a few. The NYT has become a journalistic symbol - almost an academic endeavor - above and beyond a fount of accuracy.

Facts? Eh. It's the idea that counts. Every name could have been accurate, and may as well have been. If it feels good, and sounds good, print it.

 

The self-slurping was part of the point.

 

It's not NYT's job - or anyone else's - to link stories to other publications. Deaths occur regardless of attribution to a publication. Collaboration among publications has improved, but if you think too many places are going to that extreme, you're kidding yourself.

 

I read about a column and a half and loved it. It immediately reminded me of the fabulous job the paper did following 9/11 with all the remembrances of many who died.

 

I thought it was very poignant, very well done, etc. But just can't help but think about how all of this reporting was really done by the overworked, underpaid reporters at major metro or small-town newspapers.

I guess I can't blame the NYT for citing that work, it's not like they owe anyone money or whatever, but still. More the fault of the industry as a whole than any one person or organization.

 

I don't remember many news organizations trying to pull off such a massive project from so many sources around the country. Should the information given have been perfectly accurate? Sure. If the Times did the same project again if/when the death toll reaches 200,000 would they do better? I think so.

But as a subscriber I thought it was moving. And I never expected absolute perfection.

As to the suggestion do large projects such as these perfectly or don't do them at all if any journalistic organization followed that advice such projects would not get done.

 

So they get a, “Good try, good effort?”

They fucked it up.

 

The errors are very unfortunate, but it was still a provocative front page.