I was reading a website for journalists this afternoon and came across a posting from the public editor of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution about the number of corrections that paper published last year.

“Last year, the AJC published 809 corrections in the print edition, compared with 985 in 2006 and 1,032 in 2005. There were fewer corrections published last year, but that doesn’t mean we made fewer mistakes. It’s more likely that we didn’t catch as many.”

That last line struck me. I recently reported to the Post-Dispatch newsroom that our number of errors also dropped a good bit last year. But I credited some efforts we implemented to cut errors. Perhaps though, like the AJC editor thinks, we just didn’t catch as many of our mistakes.

The Post-Dispatch’s policy is to correct on Page A2 all errors of fact that are brought to our attention or that we self-detect — in our own or a colleague’s work. (Sometimes we run clarifications, which aren’t necessarily corrections of mistakes. If something is vague, or if a set of facts is disputed by a party involved, we sometimes try to clarify matters with a note on A2.)

My recent note to the newsroom regarding the number of corrections we ran last year:

“As our Corrections Policy states: As journalists, we want to get it right, for our readers and for our own professional pride. We’re all embarrassed when we make mistakes because we know that mistakes erode our credibility and compromise our journalism. Accuracy is our stock in trade.

Well, our stock is looking stronger.

Our error total in 2007 was 635, the lowest number for any year since we began tracking corrections in 2001.

For the first few years we tracked corrections, the numbers were sad and steady. We exceeded 800 errors in 2002, 2003, 2004 and 2005. (2005 was the worst year, with 847 corrections.)

In the spring of 2006, a group of staffers from across the newsroom drafted a set of Verification Guidelines aimed at reducing our mistakes. (The Verification Guidelines are part of the Newsroom Handbook.)

There’s some evidence the guidelines are helping. The corrections total for 2006 was 771. Last year, corrections were cut to 635.

That’s cause for some celebration. And a renewed call for diligence.

We recorded success stories last year in a number of categories:
*We misspelled names 65 times last year, down from 90 in 2006 and 86 in 2005.
*The number of mistakes in headlines dropped to 31, from 40 and 43.
*Cutline errors fell to 46, from 84 and 96.
*Mistakes in graphics and maps totaled 13, down from 27 and 18.
*Wrong phone numbers dropped to 6, from 11 and 11.
*Wrong web addresses held steady, 5 compared to 6 and 3. (But we run more web addresses these days.)
*Design and pagination errors totaled 30, down from 43 in 2006 but up from 23 in 2005.

The only category to show a marked increase was in the number of times we blamed errors on our wire services. That jumped to 23, from 8 and 5.

Production errors climbed to 25, from 19 and 21. “

This is from our policy on corrections:

“We correct all published mistakes in a timely fashion.

All corrections should appear on Page A2. In some instances, a correction might refer to a more complete account in another section: a rerun of an obituary or rerun of the wrong day’s horoscope, for example.

Corrections should not be embedded in stories or columns.

Corrections should be clear and concise. Readers should never be forced to wonder what is being corrected. They shouldn’t be left guessing where the error occurred. The best format is to state the correct facts, describe the error and where it occurred. Don’t repeat the mistake in making the correction unless it is necessary to make it clear to readers what is being corrected.”