Keeping it straight

The Daytona News-Journal has begun randomly fact-checking articles.

The managing editor for operations, Bruce Keuhn, is mailing a form to people who were quoted in randomly selected articles, checking on fairness and accuracy.

The form will ask:

1. Were there any inaccuracies in the article, headline or picture caption?
2. Was there anything left out?
3. Is there anything you think should be followed up in another article?

Then it asks for additional comments.

The forms seem unlikely to affect copy editors much. When copy editors flag something questionable, that will still be handled by front-end editors, Keuhn told me. "Our intent is to keep the credibility letters purely random."

On top of this, the paper has a corrections editor who tracks where an how errors occur.

I'll be really interested to see where this goes. Will the paper find more inaccuracies than it expected?