We apologise

First of all, I need to apologise.

This weekend Roodepoort Record journalist Riaan van Zyl wrote an article about hijackers that was shot on Ontdekkers Road Friday evening and he made a lot of grammar and spelling mistakes in the article.

He received some pretty nasty comments on Facebook and our website and although I wholeheartedly agree with the readers that he is a professional and should know better than to publish articles that has poor language and grammar, it wasn’t necessary to attack him in his private capacity.

He has apologised on the website and I apologised on Facebook for the mistakes and yes, I agree, he should have known better and someone should have proofread the article before it was published.

As an editor, I take full responsibility for whatever is published. Unfortunately I was out of signal range, enjoying the sunset in Mooketsi (Limpopo). But as soon as I could, the mistakes were fixed, albeit too late.

Sometimes, a journalist is in such a hurry to write the article and get it up on our website, because, after all it is breaking news, they make mistakes. What makes social media so nice is that you can go back later to change the facts and fix the mistakes. By the time it was bought under my attention, it was early Sunday morning and I had to drive about 45 minutes to Duiwelskloof to get a strong enough signal.

There were a lot of positive comments as well but it is always nice to hear from the community, regardless whether they criticise or compliment us. It keeps us on our toes.

Some of the comments were pretty nasty though. There were a few personal attacks and threats made, which I feel was unnecessary. Point out the mistakes, let us know when something is wrong, but please don’t get personal.

Riaan said he is very embarrassed about the poor quality of the article. He admitted to making stupid mistakes and he said he takes pride in his work, unfortunately nobody is infallible. The record will publish an update in the next edition about the shooting.

However, I undertake to get the necessary measures in place to ensure this does not happen again.

Another shocker was when I read that there are confirmed cases of rabies in Roodepoort. Please make sure you vaccinate your animals against this disease.

The record will publish all the information relating rabies in the next edition. Apparently it is also deadly to humans as well.

Please take care of your animals and one another.

Until next week.
Ciao