Aug. 21, 2000

'NEVADA APPEAL' PAYS FOR ITS MISTAKES
After Bad Day, Publisher Credits Customer Accounts

By STEVE FRIESS

If Firestone hands out free tires to replace faulty ones and department stores allow refunds for damaged goods, one Nevada newspaper publisher believes subscribers should get their money back, too, at least on days when particularly egregious mistakes are made.

In an extraordinary front-page apology Aug. 10, Nevada Appeal Editor/Publisher Jeff Ackerman announced that each home-delivery customer would be credited for one day on his or her subscription to make amends for publishing an incorrect mug shot the day before.

An Aug. 9 story about an endorsement of a mayoral candidate featured a photo of the candidate's brother, a local judge. It was at least the third time the Carson City daily had made that same mistake, Ackerman said.

'You probably want to know why you should pay for a newspaper that continues to screw up names, dates, places, and fails to provide the kind of quality you deserve and expect,' wrote Ackerman, whose 12- inch mea culpa ran at the bottom-right corner of Page One. 'Fair enough.'

The decision at the 15,983-circulation paper, owned by Swift Newspapers Inc., cost about $2,750, or 25 cents for each of 11,000 home-delivery subscribers, Ackerman said.

That's a remarkable price to pay for something of a run-of-the- mill mistake in the newspaper business, said Rich Oppel, editor of the Austin (Texas) American-Statesman and president of the American Society of Newspaper Editors.

'I've never heard of that before,' Oppel said. 'It does seem extraordinary. If I had to give money back for every newspaper I sold that contained an error, I'd be out a good pile of money. But I respect [Ackerman] for bringing that degree of importance to accuracy.'

For his part, Ackerman said his personal frustration with a rash of errors spurred the apology and reimbursement. Dozens of readers called to complain, including both of the brothers, although Ackerman insisted the move wasn't in response to any legal threats.

'I'd come to a point where I wondered why newspapers are any different than any other business,' said Ackerman, who nonetheless said readers won't be getting a refund for every error. 'If I eat in a restaurant and the food is lousy, does the cook say, 'Well, you should've come here yesterday, it was much better then,' or 'Come in tomorrow, it'll be better'? I had to do something. I was not proud of our product that day.'

Readers called to laud the rebate as an unusual effort to acknowledge mistakes, but Ackerman has misgivings about being so publicly critical of his staff's work. He blamed much of his paper's error problems on a robust job market that forces small papers to hire inexperienced journalists and on pagination, which has made busy editors into untrained page designers.

'This was just a reaction,' Ackerman said. 'Was it the correct one? I don't know. The readers thought it was noble. I didn't mean to put our newsroom in a bad light, because they're trying their best to put out a good newspaper and they do put out a good newspaper. I just thought, 'Geez,
again?''

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