The most recent 20 comments posted to Electrolite by scott rosenberg:

OK... Julia suggests there is a "major error" in Farah's piece, that Atrios was "not responding to Kristof's piece on sex slavery, but his followup suggestion that feminists aren't interested." I just looked up the Atrios comment that Farah quotes ("Fuck you Kristof, you human scum.") The comment appears as part of a post that reads, in its entirety, "Like Roger Ailes, I had conflicted views about Kristof's ego-boosting adventure in girl-purchasing. But, now that it's all over, I can say - Fuck you Kristof, you human scum."

On "You human scum," Atrios links to a post by "Roger Ailes" (not, it seems, the guy who runs Fox) that discusses what Kristof got wrong about feminist organizations.

So I'm sorry, I don't see an error here, certainly not a major one. Atrios' post clearly states that he is saying "Fuck you" to Kristof on the basis of having read the whole series. To me, that's his primary statement: "the series is over, now I can say, Fuck you, etc." The link is a secondary reference that adds a further dimension to his condemnation, but it doesn't seem tobe his main motivation for denouncing Kristof.

As for some of the other complaints here, let me take them one one at a time:

Kip asks why the display or "teaser" copy was not corrected as quickly as the story itself. I don't know if that was the case, but if it was, it was a production error. We make those sometimes. We're a much smaller operation than we used to be. If it's a sign of anything it's of how overworked out staff is, not bad faith.

Barry: I'm a 45-year-old writer and editor with no interest in being a "kewl kid," whatever that is. Or a Kool Kid. "Running an actual liberal news zine" is what we're, mostly, trying to do, though I'm afraid the niche is not as lucrative as you might think. Our vision of "liberal" has always included the notion that we'll be publishing opinions we disagree with. Also that we don't have a party line. So it doesn't make a lot of sense to read this one little gossip-column item by a junior writer as somehow representing some sort of "official Salon position." There are no official Salon positions, just writers we publish.

Alan: Sorry you don't like the ads. They do help keep us afloat. If you pay for a subscription the ads go away.

Ray: no one ever said the error was the result of "vagaries of communication." It was *a mistake,* we admitted it and corrected it very forthrightly in our correction notice, which says, "A Feb. 4 article in The Fix misinterpreted a satirical item about George W. Bush written by the blogger Atrios. The item, a letter from a former maid of the president making outlandish allegations, was parody. Salon regrets the error."

Patrick suggests that we had to be "seriously nudged at every stage" to make the correction. I'm not sure what he's referring to. We ran the correction as quickly as our editorial process allows. I think the story was up only a few hours before we fixed it. From the moment we looked at it we knew we needed to correct it; there was no reluctance on our part. We have an east coast and west coast office, so sometimes there's a lag.

I don't know that I've answered every single complaint but that's a lot of them. This was not part of some Andrew Sullivan conspiracy. I don't like Andrew Sullivan's politics myself, I've violently disagreed with him many times in print, he hasn't written for Salon in months that I can recall, and this whole thing has nothing to do with him. It was just a dumb error that we've corrected and wish never happened. But when you publish 10-15 articles every day and you have a relatively tiny staff and you're also trying to put most of your time and energy into in-depth reporting while also keeping a business afloat (toward which end things like gossip columns actually help), well, it's hard to be perfect. That's why we have a corrections column in the first place -- so we own up to this stuff and can't pretend that we didn't screw up.

No drive-bys here. I'm looking for a parking space... But I *am* on the road right now (oops, the metaphor is now hopelessly garbled), and on deadline here at ETCon. I'll post a real answer later tonight or tomorrow. OK? Sorry for delay.

Hey, a writer made a mistake, we copped to it, we corrected it, and noted the correction.

The page has two bylines on it, though they are "tag-lines" at the ends of the pieces, so maybe that's why you didn't see them.

If one goof makes us all "morons," then I think you'd be hard-pressed to find a non-moronic Web site any where. I'd like to think that our >8 years of publishing thousands of articles by hundreds of writers (including, just coincidentally, Greg Costikyan who is referenced above) weigh a little more heavily in the scales.

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