Albom's copy editors disciplined?

Carole Leigh Hutton, editor and publisher of the Detroit Free Press, tells Editor & Publisher that the internal ethics committee studying Mitch Albom's problem column is also looking at the paper's policies on editing columnists.

She said the committee ?is reviewing whether we edit different people differently. ...

?We have a lot of columnists at the Free Press, and we want them to be edited vigorously,? she told E&P. ?I have heard from a lot of copy editors in recent weeks who have said they have always edited him vigorously. But we wanted to see if we edit some people too lightly.?

Albom was not fired for writing a column about an event that never occurred, and Hutton would not say what his discipline was.

Four others at the paper were also disciplined, Hutton said in a letter to readers Saturday -- "each of whom had some role in putting the April 3 column into the paper and each of whom had the responsibility to fix errors before publication." (I guess we can assume that that includes a rim and slot editor. So let's take a lesson from this to stay as focused on precious columnists' work as we do on anything else.)

Hutton told E&P that the paper will publish a story about the investigation. "I would expect it would say more than my note."