The worst checking error is calling people dead who are not dead. In the words of John Hersh, “It really annoys them.” Sara remembers a reader in a nursing home who read in The New Yorker that he was “the late” reader in the nursing home. He wrote demanding a correction. The New Yorker, in its next issue, of course complied, inadvertently doubling the error, because the reader died over the weekend while the magazine was being printed.
John McPhee in a story about the famed New Yorker fact-checkers. Sara is Sara Lippincott a retired New Yorker editor — and fact-checker 1966-1982. Story (in February 9 & 16, 2009, issue) available to subscribers online.