Jack Armstrong's death
Journalists are on heightened alert this week. More on that in a moment.
We're late on the death of hall of fame radio disk jockey Jack Armstrong. And it is a good example of why sometimes it is more important to make sure you're not wrong than simply ending up right.
Reporter Joe Killian saw the note about Armstrong's death on Cone's blog Monday night. He began tracking it into Tuesday, interviewing those who knew Armstrong -- getting some good remembrances -- and putting together a news obit. Problem was, he couldn't find anyone with first-hand knowledge that the larger-than-life radio personality was dead. No funeral home. No family member. He saw the MySpace announcement and tributes but, you know, it was a MySpace message. Could have been true, could have been a hoax. An obituary is too important to take the chance.
With no verification, we wouldn't publish.
We finally got e-mail verification from Armstrong's daughter Wednesday afternoon, and published what we had online then, and in the paper this morning.
Tuesday is April Fool's Day. People often try to punk newspapers, with some success. Radio DJs are notorious for April Fool's pranks.
"I hate that we didn't have it the first day, but I wouldn't have wanted to run it without confirmation," Joe says. Exactly right.
His obituary, published today, is here.
Update: A colleague asked if I was suggesting that Ed should have checked before he published. Not at all. Ed told readers his source and linked to the MySpace page. Our publication standards are different than bloggers. If the obit had turned out to be bogus, Ed could have corrected it immediately. Published in the newspaper, of course, we would have been stuck in a 24-hour news cycle.
Is that being old-fashioned?
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