Catch of my lifetime

While it is impossible to know what errors I will catch later in my life, the one I made today might be tough to beat. It's not so much the mistake that was made that makes my catch noteworthy. My catch wins "catch of my lifetime" due to fact that I caught an error by Andy Schotz, the SPJ Ethics Committee Chair, in his article reviewing ethics and poor journalism during the past year. The irony made me chuckle.

As I neared the end of the Schotz article we read in class this morning, "Journalism Ethics: Year in Review," I spotted an error. In the fourteenth paragraph, Pat Tillman is wrongly described as an "Iraq war casualty." Tillman died in Afghanistan.

His response to my email was professional and brief:

No, you are the first.

And you are correct.

Thanks for being a careful reader and for letting me know.

I'll ask that we post a correction.

-Andy Schotz

...

I found another mistake while walking home from the media lab tonight. While it's not in the running for "catch of my lifetime," it's surely one of my favorite errors to spot and has been at the top of my list ever since I learned of it in JOUR 400 with Jeff Unger.

There is a chalkboard outside of Illini Media advertising their "First Annual Super Raffle." Do you see the error?

If it is the first raffle they are holding, it cannot be the "first annual," even if they are planning on holding raffles in years to come.