The shocking embarrassment of Rolling Stone over its campus rape story brings to mind the Jayson Blair scandal at The New York Times, the Jack Kelley scandal at USA Today, the Janet Cooke scandal at The Washington Post, and any number of less-notorious instances of fabrication and plagiarism.
What all these disgraces have in common is a failure of editors to fulfill their duty to be skeptical. And we know how they come about: The story was just too good, or the writer was a star who had risen to a status above editing, or simple haste, carelessness, or laziness led to the inevitable result.
At the invitation of the Maryland-Delaware-District of Columbia Press Foundation, I will be conducting a workshop on Skeptical Editing on Friday, May 8, from 9:00 a.m. to noon at The Baltimore Sun, 501 North Calvert Street in Baltimore. The cost is $75 for MDDC Press Association members, $85 for non-members. A registration form is here.
If you are skeptical about the utility of such a workshop (as you should be, as a journalist), I'm prepared to demonstrate its worth.