Quotes

Quote 193 of 521

A word about fact checking. Several hindsight artists have been quoted
in the press saying that the New Republic's fact checkers should have
caught Glass. At least two of Slate's editors are on record, though,
deriding the institution of the "fact checking department." And Slate
does not have a fact checking department or "fact checkers" so
labeled. We do have a group of people whose duties include making sure
our writers are as accurate as possible. They are called "writers."
And we have another group of people who skeptically examine what our
writers produce and try to catch errors of fact (or of logic or
analysis or spelling or taste or--in the case of poetry--rhyme and
meter). These people are called "editors." What we do not have is
people whose job it is to duplicate the writers' research from
scratch.

Michael Kinsley
		   http://slate.msn.com/Readme/98-05-16/Readme.asp

Tags: factcheckers checkers newrepublic hindsight rhyme slate scratch spelling editors logic poetry job