Patterico, noted blogosphere critic of the Los Angeles Times, goes into enemy territory to deliver a measured and sensible criticism of the trade's method of handling corrections:

Has anyone ever said something about you that wasn't true? Something that, if people believed it, would significantly damage your reputation? How would you feel if you saw that falsehood printed on the front page of the Los Angeles Times? Would it make things right if the paper later retracted the false statement — with a brief correction buried inside the paper?

For some, this is not a hypothetical question. Just ask L. Paul Bremer III, Antonin Scalia or the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth. ... Each of these false assertions damaged someone's reputation, and each ran on the front page of the L.A. Times. In each case, The Times later ran a small correction inside the paper — alongside corrections of trivial errors, such as misspelled names. In each case, only a fraction of the people who read the original article ever saw the correction.

Read all of Patrick "Patterico" Frey's excellent column, part of the LA Times innovative "Outside the Tent" series, in which they invite their critics inside to allow the criticism full publication to the Times' readers. So far, it hasn't improved their coverage, but it's a step in the right direction.

I note, however, that Patterico never mentions the words Dog Trainer in his column. Has he gone soft on the LAT?

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