Tim Francis, the former owner of the Barriere Star/Journal, often said that if your newspaper has no mistakes in it, then you're spending too much time proofreading.
Yes, but does the mistake have to be an important factual error in the middle of page one? And does it have to be an error about a date that will be too late to correct in the following issue?
Your editor often says that one nice thing about working for the newspaper is that, if you make a mistake, thousands of people will see it and there always will be someone willing to tell you about it.
In last week's issue in a page one story we said that Clearwater and District Chamber of Commerce would be holding a general meeting on Monday, Jan. 14. Guest speakers would be Bas Delaney to talk about forestry and Brad Bradbury to talk about tourism.
Chamber manager Hettie Buck was the one who told us about the error. The meeting would be on Tuesday, Jan. 15, not the 14th, she said.
Buck said the Chamber meeting had originally been scheduled for Jan. 14 but was changed because of another meeting planned for that date. However, the correct date was provided to the newspaper and it appears that the error was our fault.
We immediately posted a correction with an apology on our website.
As if that wasn't enough, the previous week, in our Jan. 3 issue, we had a news item that stated there would be a meeting about the proposed roundabout on Jan. 14.
Ministry of Transportation and Infrastructure then postponed the meeting but, by the time we found out, it was too late to change in the newspaper.
That meeting about the roundabout likely will be held sometime in late February or early March.
One thing we can confidently say is that something will happen on Jan. 14. By the time you read this in our Jan. 17 issue, you will know what it is. It might or might not be important. However, it won't be a Chamber of Commerce meeting. And it won't be a meeting about the roundabout. And we apologize once again for the errors.