A couple of weeks ago I wrote what I guess could fit into the latest buzz-word category, “fake news.”
The story about a bear meandering along the top of Humboldt Hill was a light piece — at least that was the intention — that concluded with the friendly bear donning a “Smokey” hat and making the plea to help prevent forest fires.
That’s much different from fake stories — the internet is filled with them — meant to affect such things as political races or degrade folks.
I wrote my first news story for the Register at age 14 in 1957, when Bud Roberts, then sports editor, asked if I would cover a Humboldt High basketball game.
I recall I had some doubts about one word. Was it conceded or conceited that I wanted to use. I went to a dictionary and quickly learned it was conceded, as in “Joe Womack was the conceded leader of the team.” He might have been conceited, but that was a judgment I was in no position to make.
That doesn’t square with the reference to fake news that’s all the talk on 24-hour news channels today. However, individually it was an important point for myself in the lead-up to a professional career that at the time I had no intention of following. I was pretty good at math — if you made good grades under May Stange, you had have a pretty good handle on numbers — and thought some technical field was in my future.
Instead, I eventually came aboard the Register after working nights at the Pittsburg Sun the three previous years while attending Kansas State College of Pittsburg, now Pitt State.
So, you may be asking, just where does this winding path lead? To say that all of us who write news stories for the Register, and who design advertising, do our very best to make sure it is error-free. We double-check names — still make a mistake now and then — and are careful to ask what may seem naive questions to be sure of facts.
And, when we do misstep, no one wants it corrected more than we do.
So, if we do mess up, please call it to our attention. We can’t mend a broken heart — most of the time — but we are eager to correct any mistake.
p.p1 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; text-align: justify; text-indent: 10.5px; font: 9.5px ‘Nimrod MT’} span.s1 {font-kerning: none}
