Love your blog --just discovered it by following links on the Wiesletier kerfuffle (hubbub, whatever).

I got the impression from the Lippman piece that Gussow and/or his copy-editor weren't terribly attentive to the genre the article was addressing either, as they misspelled "Pelecanos" and got the name of Tess's newspaper wrong. Maybe I'm holding the Paper of Record to unreasonably high standards.

The misspelling of George's name broke my heart, but Gussow is pretty well-read in the genre and his preparation for the interview was notable.

Almost every piece written about me has at least one error -- and the error is usually trifling. In fact, as a former reporter, I can see how I sometimes help create the errors by talking too quickly and glancingly. I've never been quoted out of context, although some of my more fatuous quotes sounded less fatuous in full contest. Still, my meaning has never been distorted.

It's so hard to get things right and newspaper copy-editors deal more with language than facts. If a copy-editor sees a fact he/she knows to be wrong, it will be corrected, but I don't think he/she would be expected to double-check every name. On the other side, my impulse is to feel much more generous toward journalists -- and to realize that I probably made far more mistakes than I ever knew.

One of my most notable mistakes occurred in the piece I wrote about Sue Grafton's visit to Baltimore. I did an A-B-C approach (yes, I wince now at the thought of it) and -- I SCREWED UP THE ALPHABET. In my piece, it went X-W-Y-Z. A reader caught it, but told me privately days later, so we didn't run a correction.

I'm not sure I'd be tough enough to stand up to a blogger's commentary. But, yes, I am gray beneath it all. How did Ron know?

Context, not contest. Sigh. See how it easy it is to be imperfect? Well, it's easy for me.

Oh, heavens, I would never joke about somebody's hair turning gray. It's already happening to me, and I'm not happy about it in the slightest. For another thing, The Significant Other would kill me.

As for the "unreasonably high standards" to which we hold the Times, well, a Sunday magazine story on Reverend Billy managed to relocate Astor Place to Greenwich Village, so clearly the whole paper is shot to hell.

"Identity erotica"?? That's a hot one, along with "sociologically complex" (eyes rolling skyward).

I wonder what the downtowners called the uptowners' "buffet flats" during the 1920s.

Me, I'd call them orgies. But I guess that's too simplistic for lovers of the double-barreled...