A response to a pedant

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I took today off, which is to say I don't think I put my all into everything. I published two newsletters, and the Charlottesville one was mostly filler. I didn't do any real research, but I had content so I put it out. I was a real hamburger waiter! 

There was an error in both of them in a preview of Charlottesville City Council's meeting. I was so tired when I wrote this but I was writing for the Fifth District Community Engagement newsletter. 

"In any case, if you’re idea of fun is not looking through budget documents, then perhaps an article is more up your alley? Here are two ones I’ve written recently.

At 7:21 this evening, someone wrote this in response:

You can do better than this

I got this while I was trying to get caught up with recent stories so I can produce the radio and podcast version of the newsletter tomorrow. After a nap this afternoon and sometime cleaning my house and doing necessary household chores, I had some energy to put back into work. Here's what I wrote in response: 

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Here’s a funny thing.

I do a lot of research into the Charlottesville Daily Progress. The archives are online and I use them frequently. (view them)

 I’m not going to take the time to find you an example right now because it’s 7:32 p.m. and I’m finally awake enough today to try to get some work done. I’ve taken on a ridiculous task, one that only a fool would do.

It used to bother me when people would write in to point an error. I strive to be as good as I can, but I write between 3,000 and 5,000 words a day for publication. That’s absolutely insane. My word count in one day is the equivalent of the entire news section of C-Ville Weekly. I also contribute about 500 words a week. They have staff who help with editing.

I am fully aware that I do this without a net. I am fully aware that I can make mistakes.

When I was young, I used to stutter. It was awful. It was really debilitating, and I was bullied for it. I lacked confidence for a very large portion of my life because I didn't know how to control it. Not only did everyone laugh at me when I was asked to speak in class in elementary school, but my family also made fun of me mercilessly.

I got over it by pushing myself past the fear. When I was 20 or so I started working as a waiter while I was a student at Virginia Tech. This forced me to have to get over the stutter because in 1993 computer technology hadn’t yet begun to divide humans from each other. I had to communicate verbally. 

I learned ways to rethink how to begin sentences. For instance, I learned if I began to start a sentence or a phrase with an “M” I would have a hard time getting my words out.

I say all of this because in this day and age, I make my living putting myself out there each and every day as a journalist. Being a waiter allowed me the vocal confidence to realize I could put myself out there as a radio producer. I’d spent two and a half years of time as an undergraduate at a newspaper, and when I had the opportunity to add radio skills as an intern, I got hooked on the idea of being a professional.

The next time I see an error in the archives of the Daily Progress, I will clip it out and send it to you. Even with a large staff of writers, editors, and typesetters, there are many typographical mistakes throughout history. A typical newspaper from the 1960’s, let’s say, had maybe 2,000 words of local news content. I’m not including the social stuff, of which there are many more column inches. For six days a week, a team worked together to put out a product people were paying for. Mistakes were inevitable and are documented for us thanks to that archive. 

With the exception of my work for C-Ville, I work alone. Five years ago I took a leap of faith to just getout there and do it. I saw a gaping hole in information for the public. I had created an appetite in this community for a certain kind of well-written information. In my eleven years at Charlottesville Tomorrow, I had a team of people to catch mistakes I am prone to making. I know what they are, but am not going to write them out because I have about two hours of work ahead of me to try to continue to navigate a torrent of information that people are paying me to sift through.

 I am still working on ways to add an editor to my mix, but I do not bring in enough revenue to do so. I also am not confident in my business abilities. However, I am working on the issue.

I would like to address the manner in which you described what is a simple error where my fingers type out a word my mind envisions and uses a homonym. You said I should be better than that.

That conjures up memories of the taunts I would have for not being able to speak “properly” and I will admit a sense of shame springs up. But, in order to do this job properly and to continue to report on information that no other information outlets are covering, I have to tamp that down quickly.  Your comment doesn’t bother me the way it might have in the past, a past in which our nation wasn’t thrust into a constitutional crisis, a constitutional crisis that I would argue is caused by a lack of journalism that seeks to cover the topics I do.

There are many times I question why I have devoted my entire life to this work, and have worked seven days a week since the election. There was a time when comments like yours might have tipped the scales in favor of quitting. I am a human being at the center of this, one who sometimes has no idea how it’s all coming together.

I invite you to stop reading if an occasional grammatical error offends you. I can predict that even with a team backing me up, there will still be errors. This phenomenon is inherent to a business that seeks to inform people first, and sometimes the need to publish is overwhelming. I am striving to add quality control measures.

In other words, I am working to be better.

Now it’s 7:59 p.m. I thank you for this opportunity to comment. There may be errors in this, but I’ll check them as I put this in my journal.

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And I've done that now. Now, I need to get to work at 8:37 p.m. But, the funny thing really is that this is my life. All of the professional work I do is also personal. In this crazy world I've found a niche that people want to keep paying me to do. 

We all make mistakes. How we treat each other when we do is important. I am always grateful when people point out errors. But when it becomes a taunt, I'm not going to feel shame anymore.

I don't have time for that. 





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