To err is human. To err is to be a reporter. To err is to miss seeing Adam Ant disrobe.
I spend too many hours on newspapers.com, which has digitized hundreds of newspapers, including the Democrat and Chronicle and the now-defunct Rochester Times-Union.
Sometimes in search of one thing, I get distracted by a correction. There it is in the bottom left corner of the page. Briefly, the paper sets the record straight and fixes an error that it has noticed or a reader spotted.
Thus, in search of something unrelated, I came upon this correction from March 8, 1984:
“The review of the Adam Ant concert in yesterday’s Democrat and Chronicle incorrectly stated that Ant did not remove his clothes during his performance. During his second encore, which the reviewer
missed because of deadline pressure, Ant did take off most of his outfit.”
Thus, the story was corrected.
It’s not surprising that the reviewer had expected Ant to go au natural.
By the time he came to Rochester, Ant, a teen idol, had at least partially disrobed in his concerts. It was part of his brand.
Thus, it did make sense that the reviewer had written, “Ant keeps his clothes on during his performances. It’s all very safe.” It also made sense that the reviewer left early. Deadlines are deadlines.
I can imagine that upon reading the review, the 5,000 fans who stayed to the end of the concert called the Democrat and Chronicle demanding the error be corrected. Thus, it was.
There have been stranger corrections. One happened on my watch in 1990 when I was doing my best as the managing editor of the Democrat and Chronicle.
A colleague let me know that a biographical blurb accompanying a story in the Features section on Patrick Keefe, a successful creator of television cartoons, may have included an error.
In the blurb, we had stated that Keefe “can whistle Yankee Doodle through his nose while standing on his head and drinking beer.”
I realized that, if wrong, we had to correct this error.
But first, I said we should check with Keefe, to see if he could do what we, and we alone, said he could do. Alas, he couldn’t. Thus, a correction ran.
It turned out that the line about whistling Yankee Doodle, etc., had been published by mistake, having been inserted as a joke by the writer with the understanding it would be taken out along the editing way.
By this time, I had made errors myself, one that was the subject of years of constant ridicule by my journalist friends. (Really, they’re jackals. They pounce.)
On. Jan. 12, 1982, I was a relatively new reporter at the Times-Union. A snowstorm had hit Rochester, and I was sent to the FIGHT Village Apartments, where pipes were frozen and people were suffering.
After getting the story, I hustled back to the paper’s home office and wrote that 10 apartments were without heat, and workers were attempting to “unthaw frozen water pipes.”
Soon after my story appeared the jackals jumped.
Led by cops reporter Doug Mandelaro, they let me know that my phrase made no sense. They pointed out that “unthaw” meant to “freeze.” Thus, I had the workers freezing frozen pipes.
In my defense, I could have noted that an apartment official I quoted said that workers got a frozen pipe “unthawed.”
And I could also have said that the Merriam-Webster Dictionary says that “unthaw” can mean “to thaw,” though “thaw is sometimes cited as an illogical error.”
I also could have said that I revised the story for later editions, the unthawing disappeared
However, I was too embarrassed to fight back. To this day, I regret the error, even if it wasn’t an error.
Time marches on. Errors will occur. I can only wish that down the line Adam Ant, still performing, will take off some of his clothes.
Perhaps, too, there’s people out there who can whistle "Yankee Doodle" through their noses while standing on their heads and drinking beer.
Let’s unthaw (thaw) those stories, follow them up. It would be the correct thing to do.
From his home in Geneseo, Livingston County, retired senior editor Jim Memmott writes Remarkable Rochester about who we were, who we are. He can be reached at jmemmott@gannett.com or write Box 274, Geneseo, NY 14454.
This article originally appeared on Rochester Democrat and Chronicle: Did Adam Ant undress? You had to be there
