Have you ever had the feeling that makes you say, “It feels like a Sunday,” or “I feels like Friday.”?
Sometimes it’s because of a holiday weekend when you take Friday or Monday off and it throws your week out of whack.
In my case, the phenomenon has struck me because of our new printing and distribution schedule. And I can’t shake it.
Last week, as I was about to wrap up the paper and send the pages to our new printer, I noticed my standoff story didn’t include the day of the week in which the standoff occurred. Just an oversight, and I was able to fix it.
Only I didn’t fix it. I made it worse. I hurriedly went to the top of the story and typed in “Wednesday.”
Now you know and I know the incident occurred the day before, on Tuesday. However, my brain told me it happened Wednesday.
That’s how off I have been. Our deadline day has moved from Tuesday to Wednesday. I, being a creature of habit, still haven’t been able to adjust my schedule, and I mistakenly typed in Wednesday. It was just one word, so I didn’t have anyone proof it, which I should’ve. I continue to be off a day, which is much better than being off a week, which I have often been guilty of as well.
So the mistake made last week’s paper, and I’ve been kicking myself ever since.
I know, nobody’s perfect. I make mistakes every week, and this one stands out more than others because it makes me look like I don’t know what’s going on. I do know what’s going on, I just sometimes don’t show it.
No excuses though. It was a mistake, and a bad one at that, because of the importance of that story.
The worst part of making a mistake is I don’t know I do until I really think about it. For some reason, as I was driving to work last Thursday morning, last Wednesday got into the my head as I was thinking about that story. My subconscious opened up and I began to ask myself if I put the wrong day in there, because I remembered sneaking it in the day before the pages went to print.
Then I asked myself, “Did I put the right day in?’. Sure I did. Maybe I did. No, I don’t think I did. Then I looked at the paper and saw that I typed in Wednesday. After that confirmation, my day was ruined. Circumstances made that a difficult story to write; seeing that mistake the next day crushed me inside. How could I do that? I know the standoff was Tuesday. Why did I type in Wednesday? Part of the problem was the man who was taken into custody was arraigned earlier that day, so I really had Wednesday on my mind.
The two things that I don’t like about my job is when I make a mistake, everyone knows it and it’s permanent. I also can’t correct myself after the fact. I can publish a correction a week later, but I can’t get the toothpaste back in the tube. That’s stressful. We have three different sets of eyes looking at the stories in the paper on deadline day and we still miss things. As I’ve said before, the day we put out a perfect paper, we’re retiring and locking the doors, because I know that will never happen.
Newspapers are filled with thousands upon thousands of words, and the chances of us getting every word right fall somewhere between slim and none.
It’s not for a lack of trying. Sometimes, we get rushed. Sometimes, we get distracted. But whatever the case, we’ll always have mistakes in the paper. That’s the nature of the beast we call the Headlight.
Anyway, happy Wednesday. Err, I mean Thursday.
