Corrections Column – Mea Magnifica Culpa

As the saying goes, people who don’t make mistakes don’t make much of anything. Nevertheless, when an error goes out, it needs to be addressed. Culver City Crossroads mistakenly ran a post on Monday, Sept. 17 saying that 1) There was a city council meeting scheduled for that evening and 2) The first action item on the agenda was a discussion of the mayoral rotation.

Both were incorrect.

The Culver City Website had posted a meeting for 9/17 and an agenda to go with it. My standard procedure is to read through the agenda, see what will be discussed, and then either notify my readers, attend the meeting and/or watch it online.

I was a bit surprised that the mayoral rotation was being discussed yet again, but since I hear from people for whom it is still an issue, I thought the council might have heard from them as well, and opted to discuss the matter. But when I went online at 7 pm, there was no meeting – AND – the notification had disappeared from the site as well.

So, I killed the post – but it had already been up for three-plus hours and gone out to the RSS feed subscribers – the people who get Culver City Crossroads as a daily newsletter in their email. I heard from some of those readers, who were confused, and my only response was that I was confused as well.

Know that we never knowingly publish inaccurate information.

They confusion cleared when I heard from City Clerk Jeremy Green that the post on the site had been a test for a training – and it should not have been online for public access. They had used a previous agenda (maybe they could have chosen one that was slightly less controversial?) to work with as an example. Ms. Green offered to work with the site and make sure it did not happen again.

As for Culver City Crossroads, we have made mistakes in the past, and no doubt we will make some in the future. But as both the New York Times and the Los Angeles Times both publish corrections columns, we hope our readers understand that mistakes happen.

Judith Martin-Straw