Did It? Wrote It? Own It!

And this all reminded me of an incident years ago when a fellow editor inadvertently hit "reply all" rather than "forward" on an e-mail, which resulted in the original writer (a reader commenting negatively about something that appeared in print) seeing a snarky remark that the editor intended to send to his staff. The reader shot back an understandably angry e-mail, and the editor's first reaction was to ignore it all. But after some persuading, he apologized humbly and genuinely, and invited the reader to write an op-ed piece for the newspaper expressing his opinion on the original article. Rather than result in a former reader who would trash-talk the publication for years to come, the incident left the reader with a positive image of a publication that is run by humans who, despite making mistakes, have the cajones to own up to them and go out of their way to make things right.