Publisher's Apologies Let's face it, you have to be a bit of a whack-job to be a publisher. You've got deadlines. You've got business- side challenges of subscriber acquisition and retention, advertiser acquisition and retention, and you've got a high maintenance product, namely the editorial, that demands ongoing attention as it changes 100% every week. Now, I am quite proud of the WDFM editorial product. There are fewer typos in it than are in many print publications. Eileen Shulock has done a superlative job of cleaning the copy. My assistant Richard Witt also proofs it before it goes out, and still, still, an occasional typo manages to get through that filtration system. The spell checker changed Voila to Viola last year. So the inside joke here is that anytime we want to say "here it is," we say "Viola!" Last week, a not-well-enough-scrutinized Mr. Spell Checker turned into Mr. Spell Wrecker, not on the regular text, no, for that was already cleaned by Eileen, Richard, and Guest Editor Ruth Stevens. No sir, Mr. Spell Wrecker went to work on proper nouns, specifically those proper nouns belonging to some of the sites reviewed. In short, a Publisher's nightmare. Do I issue a corrected version? Do I issue a short apology and point people to the website for the new and improved version? Surely everyone has noticed it. No, no, that's wrong. Many didn't. Sending a follow-up message out would then only draw attention to it the way this Publisher's Note is now, to a lesser degree. Even though it is more than a day after the release as I write this piece, I haven't received one email about it! Oh, later in the day a few buddies in publishing and journalism called to pull my leg. They know this particular type of mortification. I've yet to find words to describe how it feels to publish incorrectly, beyond the occasional typo that is sometimes humorous. Dun and Bradstreet's D&B changed to DAB. Worldata came out as Wordstar. Remember Wordstar, that old word processing program? I do. Claritas turned into Clarita's, Experian to Experience, Acxiom to Axiom and their product, Abilitec, was transmogrified into Abilities. Sigh. It's a good thing Managing Editor Eileen Shulock's name wasn't in that issue: Mr. Spell Check would've changed Shulock to Shylock. My apologies go out to the aforementioned companies, and also to you, dear reader. Especially, apologies to Guest Editor Ruth Stevens as it was her copy that got ground up over here. OK, I've done my mortification thing. Let's see, I did the mea culpa deal. All right, I think I'll go soak now in a nice bath with some Epsom Salts. |
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