“Getting people’s names right is one of the most basic tasks of reporting and editing.” I didn’t say that; a New York Times editor did. So far this year, writes Philip B. Corbett on the Times Topics blog, The Times has published 2,800 corrections, and 480 of them have involved people’s names. He adds:

And every time we get a name wrong, we chip away at The Times’s credibility in the eyes of readers. It’s embarrassing when we misspell well-known names. Even worse is misspelling the names of ordinary people who may appear in The Times only once. Their moment in the spotlight is spoiled, and they’re likely to tell everyone they know that The Times can’t get its facts straight.

Here are some of Corbett’s tips for getting names right:

•  In every interview, ask the subject to spell his or her name.
• If you use another source, online or elsewhere, be sure it’s reliable. (Don’t take a Google poll and go with the spelling that gets the most hits.)
•  Don’t just check how [The Times] spelled the name last time — [its] archive is, among other things, a minefield of past errors.
• Watch out for names with common variants — Stephen and Steven, O’Neil and O’Neill and O’Neal.

And a couple more tips from me:

• If you’re at a meeting where there’s a sign-up list for speakers or an athletic event where there’s a lineup card or roster take a picture of it.
• If you’re handwriting is awful or you’re a little bit dyslexic, hand your notebook to the person you’re interviewing and ask him (or her) to print his name.

What do you think? Did this story change because 20 minutes after it was first published the facts on the ground had changed?

Was the second version a row-back? That’s journalism jargon for an effort to quietly correct a mistake in the facts, the angle or the tone of a story without acknowledging that anything was wrong with the earlier version.

Or was the change, which is accompanied by the introduction of the byline of The Times reporter who is stationed at Police Headquarters, what the many people who posted this on Facebook allege: an example of the newspaper’s bias against the Occupy Wall Street protest?

The Village Voice interviewed City Room bureau chief Andrew Newman for The Times’ response, but expressed skepticism about it, noting that the later stories eliminated a passage that said police allowed demonstrators onto the roadway.

Photo by quinn.anya/licensed under creative commons

Want to know what to do when you’re interviewing someone who talks faster than you can write? how to get that great quote that can make your story? how to avoid burdening your story with too much quotation? or even opinions on the best notebook and the right kind of pen?

A colleague at the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism, Indari Sen, has been collecting tips on taking notes. She put them in a handout for her students, and I thought I’d share them with you.

Note-Taking Tips From Professional Journalists

The best reporters return from every assignment with a notebook stuffed with quotes, information and sensory detail — the raw material we need to build a story. But how do we fill those notebooks? One of the most difficult skills for new reporters to pick up is also one of the most basic — note-taking.

Every reporter has his or her own systems for note-taking, which start with some nuts-and-bolts decisions: Reporter’s notebook or steno pad? Ballpoint or roller ball? Shorthand or cursive? To record or not? Try a few combinations and figure out what feels most comfortable for you over a long day of reporting.

It’s hard to over-emphasize the importance of solid notes. As well as providing the material for your story, your notes are also your documentation of your reporting process. Your editors or professors may on occasion ask to see your notes. They don’t need to be tidy, but they do need to be complete — if it’s in your story, it should be in your notes or your research. Your notes should also provide avenues to verify information and quotes — phone numbers, email addresses, website urls. Your integrity as a journalist rests not only on your finished product, but also upon your reporting process and your ability to document that process.

In 2007, I asked some friends to explain their note-taking systems and offer tips. Please add your own in the comments below!

Taking Notes: A selection of tips and advice from working journalists (Compiled by Indrani Sen in 2007)

Ann Givens, Newsday reporter: A journalism professor of mine once gave me this tip, and I’ve used it here and there: Before you go out on an interview, prepare a handful of throwaway questions in addition to your good ones. Then, when you’re behind in your note taking, toss out a throwaway question and just let the person talk while you’re finishing up writing.

But I think the REAL skill that everyone develops over time is just the ability to know a great quote when a person says it, and then just tune everything else out while you get it down. I think we all tend to feel like we need a zillion quotes when we’re out in the field, but when we get back and write, we realize we only need 2-3 for most stories. So the trick is catching the great ones, and then not worrying too much about letting the rest slide by.

Erik German, Newsday reporter [now at The Daily]: I try to draw squiggly lines between different speakers and I use initials followed by a colon to indicate who’s talking. If I walk into a room where 4 people are talking and I don’t know their names, I very quickly assign them numbers 1-4 as I quote them. Then, at the end, I ask everyone to spell their names, which I write down next to each number on a fresh page. I also ask for their “town of residence” and “age and occupation” (that’s my trick for sounding clinical and official rather than nosey while getting ages without calling attention to the fact that I’m asking for ages).

I write out direct quotes, but as we all know hands just can’t keep up with lips. So I do a lot of summary and paraphrase, which I try to always distinguish from quotes by surrounding it with [square brackets]. I also put brackets or boxes around key facts like ages, so I can find them quickly later. When people talk to fast, I’ll often ask people to repeat themselves, or just have them wait as I write. I try to fill the awkward silence with some joke at my own expense about how I wish I wrote as fast as people talked.

Also, in a situation where there’s a bunch of people talking, I try to write down a few (three is best) physical details for each person during moments when they repeat themselves or when they’re saying boring stuff. This helps me remember who was who when writing and it gives me something to work with just in case I need to describe the characters in my story.

If I’m really taking good notes, I’ll write down the gestures people make as they say their best quotes, just in case I want to frame their words with a bit of physical description.

After I get back to the office, and before I open up the blank word-processing page, I flip through my notebook and — preferably in a different color ink — I circle all the best quotes. I also will go through my notebook and write out abbreviated or garbled words before I forget what precisely was said and can’t make sense of my handwriting. This is especially important if more than a day will elapse between taking the notes and writing from them. They very quickly become indecipherable.

Katie Thomas, New York Times reporter: One thing that sprung to my mind immediately is if I’m at a press conference, I always record as a backup to check my notes, because the assumption is other media are covering it too and it would be awkward if they have different quotes than you do… but of course I never take notes lackadaisically, assuming I’m recording it … just in case it’s not really recording.

The other thing is more a mental trick. Rather than just frantically trying to keep up, I make sure I glance down every once in a while and just check that the notes I’m writing down are actually MAKING SENSE and are READABLE … sometimes you can get so caught up taking down half-sentences and then starting again that you don’t have anything useful. The other mental trick is to really listen for quotes — which is something that I’m sure all of us have practiced well but is hard for a new person. Once I hear a good quote, I latch onto it and don’t let go until I’ve finished writing it down… even if I miss what the person is now saying. If it’s a one on one and not a press conference, I can ask them to repeat what they just said. Sometimes I even ask a question I know the answer to, just to let them ramble while I’m catching up with something they said five minutes ago.

Then things I’ve seen other people do but have never been able to incorporate them… I saw that one reporter folds the page in on itself whenever a new person starts to talk. also, Andrew Smith draws little arrows at the bottom of each page telling him whether he has to flip the notebook over or turn a page (a sideways arrow for flip, a down arrow for turn to the next page), which always seemed to me to be genius for typing up your notes later.

Wonbo Woo, producer at ABC’s World News Tonight [Now at Nightline, and a broadcast coach at CUNY J-School]: ‘fraid this has less relevance in my part of the industry, since we have everything on tape anyhow. That said, whenever I can, I take notes for reference and take time hacks as I’m listening – I note the start time so that I can go back and do the math later to figure out how far into a long interview something happens. I do the same thing with a digital recorder if I’m doing an interview by phone and won’t have access to the tape right away. While you print folks have a tendency to hate recording things because of the time involved in transcribing (or the change in tone/character of the interview) – this is a good way to minimize that time – and for those who have trouble keeping up, I think it’s worth it.

Jennifer Smith, Newsday reporter: You don’t need to write down everything verbatim—just the best quotes, and summarize the rest. Circle or star important parts, and track different speakers by their initials. Sometimes I flip the paper over and write scene descriptions or a list of people who were there on the other side.

Keep a tape recorder handy for press conferences and other fast-moving events where other reporters are likely to be, and write the time-code down in your notepad when things of interest are said. That way you can be sure your quotes are accurate (same quotes will likely appear elsewhere) but you don’t have to spend all day transcribing Mayor Bloomberg thanking every local official who showed up for the presser.

If you are doing a longer interview for a profile and you type faster than you write longhand, you can also augment your in person interview with a phone follow-up, using a headset for hands-free conversation.

Wayne Svoboda, freelancer, former correspondent for Time magazine and Africa Editor at The Economist newspaper of London, journalism associate professor: My own thoughts, as I always tell students, include: get a good notebook. I suggest Reporter’s Note Book #651, ordered from Stationers Inc. in Richmond, Virginia. Hard to find, so sometimes classes go together to order by mail a set of a dozen or two or however many. Develop a personal shorthand, with abbreviations at least you will understand even if nobody else. Learn to buy time to record good quotes verbatim by somehow or other making your interview subject pause (ask him to repeat something anodyne so you can focus mostly on recalling what he or she just said that was a keeper).

Finally, figure out where you stand on the notebook versus tape recorder. If you choose the latter, realize you are setting yourself up for lots of time spent transcribing.

Lonnie Isabel, former deputy managing editor of Newsday, journalism associate professor: I also used a highlighter or multi-colored pins to sort notes for lede, background, or divergent viewpoints. I print the talkers’ names in the beginning and use initials for back and forth.

Mohamad Bazzi, former Newsday Middle East correspondent, Council on Foreign Relations fellow, journalism associate professor at NYU: I try to go over my notes and to underline (or highlight) key quotes. If it’s for a daily story, I try to go over (“organize”) my notes before I start writing. Sometimes, this becomes a procrastination device. I also try to type up all the quotes that I think I’m going to use in my story, and I put them in a separate file from the actual story.

If I’m working on a long-range story, I try to organize my notes on the night that I’ve done the interview. That way, I can better decipher my handwriting and I can try to paraphrase things that I might have missed. I also try to type up the key quotes/thoughts that might be in my story. I’m not always disciplined about typing up notes right away, so at the end of a week or 10 day trip, I end up with many pages of notes to type. It can take hours.

The most unusual note-taking technique that I’ve seen is from a foreign correspondent friend of mine. He often uses 2 different colored pens while conducting his interviews. So he actually color-codes his notes (and writes them in sub-categories) while he’s doing

the interview. I’ve also seem him use one of those thick multi-colored pens, and switch colors during interviews. I think his technique often worries his subjects. I wouldn’t recommend it.

And here are Indrani’s tips: I write a list of questions that I need answers to in the inside cover of my reporter’s notebook, so that I can flip back to it easily during interviews. As I’m taking notes, I look out for quotes or details that could be my lede or kicker, and I mark them with stars so that I’ll find them easily later. Before I sit down to write, I go through my notebook (or typed notes) with a highlighter and mark them up with my strange personal system — quotes I might actually use are highlighted; when a new person starts talking, I mark the page with a little stick figure; and I circle any information that I’ll paraphrase in the story.

If you have shorthand, by all means use it, but be careful not to skip words or paraphrase when you need a direct quote. My opinion on recording is there’s no harm doing it (with your source’s knowledge), as long as you also take written notes. On deadline, you’ll rarely have time to transcribe recorded interviews. And keep in mind that sooner or later your technology will fail — we all have a horror story or two about that. Also, beware of the sloppiness that can creep into your note-taking if you know you’re also recording.

As for pens: ballpoint or pencil are best when it’s raining, but the thicker ballpoint ink gets sluggish if you’re stuck outside in the freezing cold for too long, so bring along something with liquid ink, like a roller ball, next time you’re on a winter stakeout.

Tim Harper, writing coach: I advise students to practice. Take notes at home watching a reality TV show, or the news. Law & Order is always good for the close-to-real-life conversational rhythms. Then I suggest they stand up and take notes. Then walk around the room talking notes. Being able to walk and take notes is a big part of our skill set. I still practice…

Read ‘em and weep. Read ‘em and chuckle. Read ‘em and learn.

A man caught his death of bullets in the chill Washington Heights night air. Detectives early today have been pulling blanks. They are seeking a motive and witnesses, police said.

An order of protection didn’t cut it in Queens last night. A kitchen knife did.

George Washington Jones turned 21 yesterday, but the only card he got was a toe tag in the morgue.

Would you read on? Of course you would. What makes these tabloid leads is their cheekiness. The Times would never be so frivolous about murder. But what makes them great leads is that they catch your attention and hold it. You can’t wait to read more, because the promise they make is “I’m going to tell you a hell of a story. Wait ’til you hear the rest of it.”

That’s what a good lead does, no matter the style and no matter the subject. Think about that the next time you write one of your own.

An addendum: A week or so after his Facebook posting, Kappstatter produced what he called an homage to Raftery with this lead on a story about an accident at a city Sanitation garage:

A Sanitation Department mechanic dangled between the third floor and eternity Wednesday after he crashed a 16-ton salt spreader through the wall of a Queens garage

Here’s the way The Times began its story on the same event:

A 15-ton salt-spreading truck burst through the wall of a sprawling Sanitation Department repair depot in Queens on Wednesday morning and hung precariously in the air — 30 feet above the ground — until rescuers could free its driver, the authorities said.

Which one provides more information? Are you going to keep reading?

Anthony Weiner's Congressional portrait

For his story on the resignation of Rep. Anthony Weiner, the New York Congressman caught in a lurid internet sex scandal, Metro reporter Raymond Hernandez spoke to friends of Weiner’s wife Huma Abedin, who described her as worried about the couple’s financial future, since she is pregnant and he has never held a job outside of government.

Reintroducing the subject later in the story, Hernandez writes:

“Neither Ms. Abedin nor Mr. Weiner earn lucrative salaries.”

The silence of the editors gives consent to this description. Would you, or most New Yorkers, agree?

As a member of Congress, Weiner earned $174,000. According to the Plum Book of federal jobs, as Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s deputy chief of staff Abedin, who is 35, would be paid at the GS 15 level, which would make her salary somewhere between $123,827 and $160,886.

A public school teacher in New York City earns $45,530-$100,049; full-time faculty at the City University’s senior colleges are paid from $42,837 to 116,364.

Weiner represented Brooklyn and Queens where the median household income is $42,932 and $54,671, respectively, and per capita income is $22,959 and $25,268, according to the census. The couple reside in Washington, DC, where the comparable figures are household income $58,906 and per capita income $40,846. Nationally, household income is $50,221 and per capita income is $27,041.

I don’t know what a reporter at the New York Times is paid. I think journalists should be well compensated, so I’m glad that at a relatively junior level, a reporter can regard people who earn six times the median per capita income as people of modest means. But a reporter shouldn’t be so far divorced from the life of his audience that he forgets that many would envy this young couple’s wealth.

That thoughtless lack of empathy poisons–if only by a drop–the relationship between reporter and reader.

Strauss-Kahn's mug shot

The story begins in textbook fashion:

Dominique Strauss-Kahn’s accuser wasn’t just a girl working at a hotel — she was a working girl.
The Sofitel housekeeper who claims the former IMF boss sexually assaulted her in his room was doing double duty as a prostitute, collecting cash on the side from male guests, The Post has learned.

Leads make promises. This one asserts categorically that the housekeeper was a whore. Does it keep the promise? Does the Post really know what it says it knows?

Here’s what follows:

“There is information . . . of her getting extraordinary tips, if you know what I mean. And it’s not for bringing extra f–king towels,” a source close to the defense investigation said yesterday. (The ellipsis is in the original.)

The woman was allegedly purposely assigned to the Midtown hotel by her union because it knew she would bring in big bucks.

“When you’re a chambermaid at Local 6, when you first get to the US, you start at the motels at JFK [Airport]. You don’t start at the Sofitel,” the source said. “There’s a whole squad of people who saw her as an earner.”

The woman also had “a lot of her expenses — hair braiding, salon expenses — paid for by men not related to her,” the source said.

Allegations that she worked as a hotel hooker may explain why Strauss-Kahn insists their encounter was consensual. His defense attorneys refused yesterday to comment on the damning evidence — or say whether he paid her for sex.

Do you trust this information? Let’s look at the sourcing. There are three quotes, all from the same person, identified as a “source close to the defense investigation.” The attribution suggests that the information comes from an investigator hired by Strauss-Kahn’s lawyers.

Investigating a complainant is standard operating procedure, and investigators come up with plenty of tips that turns out to be bogus once they’re tested. (When I got the FBI files related to the bombing of The Riverdale Press in 1989, I found an excited wire back to headquarters that suggested that my brother and I had bombed the building ourselves because we were in a dispute with the building’s owner. A few days later came the embarrassed retraction when the FBI learned that my brother and I were the building’s owners.)

In any case, someone working for Strauss-Kahn clearly has an interest in tarnishing the image of his accuser, and a reader should at the very least be skeptical about taking the word of a single source who is self-interested and protected by a grant of anonymity.

Let’s look further:

Sources also told The Post Strauss-Kahn’s probers uncovered evidence that she was part of a pyramid scheme that targeted immigrants from her native Guinea.

“We have people who have been victimized, who have claimed she ripped them off. Nice working people from her neighborhood,” a source said.

As if anticipating the complaint that this is a one-source story, suddenly we get the plural–”Sources told the Post.” The attribution in the quote that follows is particularly fuzzy, offering no clue as to whether it comes from the same person as the earlier quotes or from someone else. My hunch? It all comes from one person.

Following these sensational allegations, the tone of the story changes dramatically. The prose becomes more formal, less colloquial. How come? Because everything else in the story is a rehash of public information contained in the court proceedings that led to Strauss-Kahn’s release without bail.

Here the Post found itself lagging. This story was published on June 2. The Times broke the story that the prosecution had collapsed on June 30. It published a story on the court proceedings on June 1.

Does getting scooped explain the Post story, or is this just the New York Post being the New York Post?

By the way, the maid has filed a libel suit.

Reporting from an unfamiliar place always has its risks, and the risks are especially acute for women.

Sabrina Tavernise

New York Times reporter Sabrina Tavernise knows the dangers. In a piece in this week’s paper headlined “Reporting While Female,”she recalls learning the hard way.

Last winter, I reported on a religious festival in Pakistan, attended by thousands of worshipers. There were no women, at least that I could see. As I waded through the crowds, I held my breath, looking behind me every few seconds, warding off gropers, pushing them away with my hands.

Crowds can be a dangerous place for reporters, especially during war or unrest. Just last Friday, colleagues in Bahrain found themselves under fire from a helicopter that seemed to have singled them out as targets.

But women reporters face another set of challenges. We are often harassed in ways that male colleagues are not. This is a hazard of the job that most of us have experienced and few of us talk about.

Among the precautions she finds necessary is taking care with how she dresses.

I have worked in a half-dozen countries since the late 1990s, including Lebanon, Gaza in Israel, Pakistan, Turkey and Russia. In none of these places was I dragged off and raped, but I have encountered abuse in many of them. The assaults usually took place in crowds, where I was pinned in place by men.

The risk of something happening is especially high when all the rules have fallen away and society is held together by a sense that anything can happen. This was the case for me in Baghdad in 2003 at the gun market, when a crowd of young men, impoverished and not used to seeing foreigners, first started touching me, and then began ripping at my clothes. A colleague helped me fend them off.

It was a beginner’s mistake. I was wearing pants, baggy and formless, but still looking nothing like any of the women in the area, who all wore abayas, black sheaths completely covering their bodies. That same day I went to an Iraqi clothing shop to stock up on ankle-length jean skirts and shirts that reached to mid-thigh.

I’ve spent part of the last week introducing a group of Dutch journalism students to the South Bronx, a place that for them–and for many New Yorkers, too–seems exotic and, at times, dangerous.

When two women in their 20s asked if it would be foolhardy to arrive in Hunts Point while it was still dark in order to shoot a sunrise as the introduction to a video they’re making about an order of cloistered nuns, I had to pause.

As it is in the rest of the city, crime is way down in Hunts Point. But poor neighborhoods suffer more from crime than affluent ones. And three women have reported being raped in the first five weeks of this year.

The Dutch reporters want to shoot at the neighborhood’s residential crossroads, where the post office, the huge BankNote building housing schools and offices and a large and a heavily-used park make the street as safe as any in the city by day. But The Hunts Point Express has recently reported that at night prostitutes troll the same street, and in the morning, groups of homeless men hanging out have raised local anxiety.

The best advice I could give was for the women to keep their equipment covered up, to walk from the subway on the commercial street a couple of blocks away from their destination, instead of taking the more direct route on quiet street of small rowhouses, and to be aware of their surroundings. And I’m glad it’s winter, when they’ll be wearing bulky coats and hats, and it will be less obvious that they’re attractive.

Men may be less likely to be harassed, but they need to heed the same advice to avoid becoming victims. Stay on self-policing streets–well-lit streets where there’s traffic, other pedestrians, stores. Don’t make yourself a target. Don’t look scared or lost. Don’t dress in a way that marks you as an outsider.

Noah

Bazelon uses a familiar journalistic technique to entice readers into a long and technical discussion of medical jurisprudence: she begins with the story of a single child, his mother and the care-giver now serving a 10 ½ year sentence in a Virginia prison.

To the details of Trudy Rueda’s widely-publicized trial, she adds interviews at the home of Erin and Michael Whitmer and in the jail cell of Rueda, who ran the in-home day care center where 5-month-old Noah Whitmer collapsed.

The interviews produce what Bazelon calls “two irreconcilable versions” of what happened on the spring morning when everything changed forever for the Whitmer and Rueda families.

In a blistering post on her blog after The Times article appeared, Whitmer writes of Bazelon, “There was something about her eyes, warm and dark – not unlike Trudy’s – that made me feel she would work diligently to present the truth.”

She is incensed when she learns that Bazelon interviewed Rueda.

We found out quite on accident and only a week or so ago that Trudy was in this story. Words can hardly convey our anger. Didn’t we have a right to know that our life and our case, which was settled over five full days of testimony a year ago, were going to be rehashed in a he-said she-said with Bazelon and her deft editing skills at the helm?

And she feels betrayed.

When I welcomed Emily Bazelon into my home in early November, I trusted her . . . I shared with her all the heartache and exhaustive details of the last couple years of our life. . . . We agreed to do it despite knowing we would hate a great deal of it; after all, she wanted to address the Shaken Baby Syndrome debate. But, we thought, if we could have the chance for people to read our blog, to read our story, to know the truth as we know it, we might have a positive impact on one baby’s life. This, in retrospect, is the same naive bullshit I contrived when convincing myself two years ago that a woman who is little more than a stranger can take loving care of my child.

When Whitmer writes that hoped in Bazelon’s article people would “read our story” she makes a key mistake. Bazelon didn’t intend to tell the Whitmers’ story. She wanted to write a story that conveyed her doubts about sending people to prison based on what she sees as doubtful medical evidence, evidence that research increasingly calls into question.

Certainly that’s an important issue that justifies the length and prominence of Bazelon’s article, which also tells of two women who were imprisoned—one for 11 years—then released after appeals courts ordered new trials and medical experts changed their testimony, and in one case, changed sides. The article leaves readers wondering how many more innocent people are rotting in prison.

Whitmer writes that she agreed to be interviewed “despite knowing we would hate a great deal of it; after all, she wanted to address the Shaken Baby Syndrome debate.” Many journalists would have been less forthcoming than Bazelon evidently was.

Bazelon doesn’t reach a conclusion about what happened to little Noah Whitmer, though. Under the circumstances, knowing how much his family was suffering and how raw their wounds are, should she have refrained from using its story? Most journalists will say that a story must serve its readers, not its subjects. But at the very least, each reporter should remember the pain he may inflict before he presents someone else’s suffering to the public gaze.

Federal courthouse, Foley Square, New York City

In response to a successful lawsuit in October 2010, in January 2011, the New York Civil Liberties Union received a federal directive making it clear that photographers have the right to photograph federal installations from a public place, The New York Times reported on Jan. 27.

The Times includes this link, and suggests printing out the bulletin to show to officers who question you.

I was getting my Blackboard up to date for my j-school class and testing the links to on-line articles I thought students would find useful. When I clicked on one about the author Jonathan Kozol‘s current thoughts about the neighborhood schools he wrote about years ago in two books, this is what came up.

Article Removed

The Daily News has removed the article that was linked here because the writer, Robert Sgobbo, a former News freelancer, has admitted fabricating sources. As a result, we don’t believe our readers can rely on the accuracy of any of his work.

Sgobbo graduated from the Columbia’s Graduate School of Journalism last year. His classmates were sure he’d go far. Soon his byline was appearing regularly in the Daily News and the Village Voice.

Then on Jan. 5, The Voice published this:

The article “For-Profit Blues” was removed from the website after the Voice learned that Sgobbo had invented a character, “Tamicka Bourges,” who claimed she had amassed a large debt at Berkeley College without obtaining a degree.

We first learned that there might be a problem when Berkeley College denied that one of its spokespersons, Kelly Meisberger, had spoken to Sgobbo. Berkeley later added that it had no record of Bourges as a student. At about the same time, the GAO called to inform us that there was no spokesperson there named “Matt Fraser,” whom the story quoted.

TCI College president Bill Talbot adds that Sgobbo invented material about his school as well, including a nonexistent student and spokesperson.

The Voice apologizes sincerely to Berkeley College, TCI, and the GAO that this false material appeared in our education supplement,

Tony Ortega
Editor
The Village Voice

Put Sgobbo’s name into Google now and you’ll find more notices like the one from the News saying his articles have been taken down because the publications he wrote for no longer consider him reliable. Even the pieces he wrote for a local blog at Columbia are gone–though without the shaming notice. All that remains of his work are stories about his fabrication and his downfall.