In recent Columbia Journalism Review column, Craig Silverman criticized ESPN-backed sports website Grantland for a lack of transparency in its corrections.
Grantland does not let readers comment on its articles and does not let readers know how to contact the site, according to Silverman.
Gawker-owned sports blog Deadspin’s managing editor, Tom Scocca, reportedly told Silverman via e-mail that many Deadspin readers report Grantland’s errors to Deadspin. because there is nowhere else where they can respond to Grantland’s factual errors.
“People have to take their grievances to Twitter or take their grievances to us,” Scocca wrote to Silverman.
As a result, Deadspin launched a a page to track inaccuracies and corrections on Grantland. The page notes Grantland’s errors, if the error has been fixed and if the site posted a correction. It also calls on readers to “Use us as the Grantland comments section that doesn’t yet exist.”
However, Patrick Stiegman, ESPN.com’s VP and editor-in-chief, told Silverman in an email that Grantland is simply adhering to ESPN’s usual corrections policy. According to that policy, “basic corrections” such as typos and punctuation mistakes, are corrected online without notifying readers, Steigman wrote. Sometimes, these corrections include striking a line through the original mistake, which is visible to readers.
Stiegman added that larger changes to a story are “noted on the story page and included on our corrections page (which we have already done so with Grantland).”