Over the past year, the Guardian readers’ office received more than 30,000 letters, phone calls and emails, the majority pointing out factual errors or complaining about published content. After investigation, these led to 3,655 corrections and clarifications, with 967 appearing in print and 2,688 made online.
Corrections are displayed prominently in a daily column on the letters page, which also appears online in extended form. A daily email is sent to editorial staff to ensure awareness. The Guardian has been publishing corrections in one place since November 1997.
Archived versions of articles from the print edition are corrected to prevent repetition of mistakes. Published corrections are attached to the top of original articles in the internal text database by the Guardian library. The same process applies to legal notes, with the original story left untouched except in sensitive cases.
For external databases, the syndication department sends daily emails to over 60 clients, such as LexisNexis and Factiva, containing a summary and link to the corrections page. On the website, corrections are made by the readers’ editor’s office or individual departments, following guidelines. Minor errors like spelling mistakes can be corrected without a footnote, but serious errors require a footnote and an email to the readers’ editor.
This contrasts with the past, when corrections were placed on random pages and librarians had to staple them to cuttings, often resulting in the paper being ripped off and mistakes repeated.
