A lot of readers out there think of journalists as an arrogant lot . . . a characterization that is, sadly, all too often earned.
So I understand why, when we make mistakes, readers sometimes take great delight in pointing them out to us.
If it's any consolation, most of us here at the Deseret Morning News genuinely agonize over our own errors. Arrogance quickly gives way to humility when one's own failings are exposed.
So we vow to never let a mistake get by us again. And none does. Until the next time.
So, in the interest of full disclosure — and without any feeble excuses — I feel the need to acknowledge a grievous error I made in last week's column. Two in the same item, in fact.
I referred to one of 2003's best movies as "The Station Master"; it's actually "The Station Agent." And I referred to co-star Patricia Clarkson as Patricia Richardson.
Good grief.
As I replied to the e-mailer who pointed this out to me, I obviously had an enormous brain cramp.
Actually, mistakes in the newspaper are more common that we'd like to admit. Sometimes, they are as simple as a typo. Or a misremembered factoid that the writer thought he knew. Or because he was hurried, with a deadline bearing down.
All stories are checked and double-checked, of course, but things do slip through. Like this one.
As I wondered how I could write something so silly, I began to remember other mistakes I've made in the paper over the years — some pointed out by readers, and others that I noticed after the paper was printed but which apparently went unnoticed by others.
Perhaps the dumbest writing error of my career — one that a longtime colleague here still enjoys recalling — happened early on in my tenure as film critic. In the first paragraph of a film-festival cover story, I somehow morphed "Melvin and Howard" into "Melvin and Dummar." (Dummar was, of course, the last name of Melvin, the film's principal character.)
Another bad one occurred when I interviewed Jamie Lee Curtis for the film "Blue Steel." She had just won a Golden Globe award for her TV sitcom "Anything But Love." In the story, I wrote that she won an Emmy.
Scott Iwasaki, our music editor, says his worst mistake was a slip of the brain in 1995 when he reviewed the last concert the Grateful Dead would play in Salt Lake City (before Jerry Garcia's death a few months later). The band performed the song "I Know You Rider," but Scott wrote that the song was "I Know You Red Rider." ("I guess I was thinking of that movie 'A Christmas Story,' " Scott said.)
Fortunately, all the mistakes we make don't get into the paper. Our TV critic Scott Pierce cites one that occurred just a couple of weeks ago, which was fixed before the story was printed. He wrote that Robert De Niro was one of the stars of HBO's "Angels in America." He meant Al Pacino.
Mistakes can also result from production decisions. This headline was given to a story I wrote: "So far — a good year for bad movies." But the bad movies were in the final few paragraphs, which were cut from the story because it was too long.
Then there was the story I wrote that was placed across the top of a page, and the ads crept up, cutting off one line from each column of type — just enough to render the story incomprehensible.
Perhaps the worst time a mistake can arise is when it happens in a story like this one, a story about mistakes. Some years ago someone wrote a column in this paper chiding those who are quick to pass judgment on public figures, and — honest — he wrote this line, which actually ran in the paper:
"Have any of us ever experienced a day when at least one thing we said did not come out wrog?"
I hope there's nothing wrog in this column today . . . but no promises.
E-mail: hicks@desnews.com