Last Saturday I made the terrible mistake of trusting a press release to cq a name. After the torture event I went to Saturday night, I hurriedly ran back to the news room and tried to write a story about it in under half an hour. Given more time, I probably could have written 80 inches about the event. It was fascinating and I had tons of great information and quotes from the speakers; they had been extremely candid with me before the event. 

As I was rushing through this story about the Anti-torture Forum, I referred to the press release for the event to cq the names of the Rev. Richard Killmer and Dr. Mohamed Elsanousi. Unfortunately, this lead to the Rev. Richard Killmer’s name being spelled with only one “l,” and an embarrassing correction being run in an otherwise passable story.

I should have used a more reliable source to check the spelling of Killmer’s name…business card, website, putting in a call to the PR woman I had talked to earlier. I was tired and anxious to get out of the newsroom at 9:30 p.m. on a Saturday night. Not that that’s a good excuse. But I did learn a valuable lesson: never trust a press release.