Corrections
Have you ever come to a sudden realization of how you behave, of how you have been behaving for a really long time without even thinking about it, but, now that it comes to mind, it really is a little bizarre? Things like noticing for the first time that, when you walk through the arcades of the quad, you take unnaturally long steps in order to take one step per grid space? Or that when you open an outward-swinging door you habitually give a too-weak push with your hand and a helpful shove/kick with your foot in order to get the door fully open?
I have.
I was reading through the Daily recently when my eye happened upon a small errata box that they had thrown in due to some fallacious quotage in a past issue. Now, I was not particularly interested in anything in the Daily that day, just as I had not been particularly interested in anything in the Daily for the past several, which span surely encompassed the article therein corrected. But when I glanced upon the correction, I was riveted. I read it carefully, trying to reconstruct in my mind the original article in full detail in order to make sense of the apology. As I was doing this, I came to a realization of the aforementioned type: a) I always do this when I see corrections in papers, even if I would have had absolutely no interest in the original article, and b) I have no idea why.
The consistency with which I pursue newspaper corrections is especially baffling to me considering that, usually if not always, articles of this type are embarrassments, either to the paper or to the article's subject. For example, in the particular correction I was reading, the tale was told of how some student or other, instead of heroically helping out in a tense situation, had in fact, according to many readers of the original article who had phoned, e-mailed, sky-written, etc. the paper, drunkenly gotten in the way of authorities who were actually trying to resolve the continuingly-vague hullabaloo. To sum up, the correction pretty much made everyone connected with the article unhappy. The paper was embarrassed. The student was embarrassed. I was embarrassed for them. The score was negative everybody, all because I felt an urge to read this correction.
And this always happens. There is no case that I can come up with in which reading a correction about an article in which I have no objective interest is a good thing. Now, I do believe that such corrections are good and necessary to preserve truth and honesty and accountability in media and lots of other things that everyone agrees are good things; it's in the act of random, disinterested people like me reading them that their value shifts to the socially questionable. And yet I read on.
Discuss.
Music of the moment:
I was invited to cover for another DJ on KZSU recently and Ben Savage joined me for the aural fête. While setting up the rough playlist for the show, I was checking out Hush records and I stumbled upon Super Xx Man, a music therapist at the Oregon State Hospital's maximum security wing who also puts out folksy albums every now and again.
Other cool discoveries were Neko Case, who apparently is a pretty popular country/indie songwriter, though I had never heard of her, Birdsongs of the Mesozoic, who play a wonderfully unique fusion of modern classical and progressive rock, with elements of jazz and percussion-centric jams thrown in, and, speaking of percussion-centric jams, Rusted Root, who play Grateful Dead-like ditties but with more of a world-percussion emphasis. Great stuff, minus the slightly annoying modern rock vox.
I have.
I was reading through the Daily recently when my eye happened upon a small errata box that they had thrown in due to some fallacious quotage in a past issue. Now, I was not particularly interested in anything in the Daily that day, just as I had not been particularly interested in anything in the Daily for the past several, which span surely encompassed the article therein corrected. But when I glanced upon the correction, I was riveted. I read it carefully, trying to reconstruct in my mind the original article in full detail in order to make sense of the apology. As I was doing this, I came to a realization of the aforementioned type: a) I always do this when I see corrections in papers, even if I would have had absolutely no interest in the original article, and b) I have no idea why.
The consistency with which I pursue newspaper corrections is especially baffling to me considering that, usually if not always, articles of this type are embarrassments, either to the paper or to the article's subject. For example, in the particular correction I was reading, the tale was told of how some student or other, instead of heroically helping out in a tense situation, had in fact, according to many readers of the original article who had phoned, e-mailed, sky-written, etc. the paper, drunkenly gotten in the way of authorities who were actually trying to resolve the continuingly-vague hullabaloo. To sum up, the correction pretty much made everyone connected with the article unhappy. The paper was embarrassed. The student was embarrassed. I was embarrassed for them. The score was negative everybody, all because I felt an urge to read this correction.
And this always happens. There is no case that I can come up with in which reading a correction about an article in which I have no objective interest is a good thing. Now, I do believe that such corrections are good and necessary to preserve truth and honesty and accountability in media and lots of other things that everyone agrees are good things; it's in the act of random, disinterested people like me reading them that their value shifts to the socially questionable. And yet I read on.
Discuss.
Music of the moment:
I was invited to cover for another DJ on KZSU recently and Ben Savage joined me for the aural fête. While setting up the rough playlist for the show, I was checking out Hush records and I stumbled upon Super Xx Man, a music therapist at the Oregon State Hospital's maximum security wing who also puts out folksy albums every now and again.
Other cool discoveries were Neko Case, who apparently is a pretty popular country/indie songwriter, though I had never heard of her, Birdsongs of the Mesozoic, who play a wonderfully unique fusion of modern classical and progressive rock, with elements of jazz and percussion-centric jams thrown in, and, speaking of percussion-centric jams, Rusted Root, who play Grateful Dead-like ditties but with more of a world-percussion emphasis. Great stuff, minus the slightly annoying modern rock vox.
