Errors and Omissions: Perhaps it’s time to review our First Night policy
Plus: Wheels of misfortune and a nasty spell in Sussex
Your support helps us to tell the story
From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The Independent is on the ground when the story is developing. Whether it's investigating the financials of Elon Musk's pro-Trump PAC or producing our latest documentary, 'The A Word', which shines a light on the American women fighting for reproductive rights, we know how important it is to parse out the facts from the messaging.
At such a critical moment in US history, we need reporters on the ground. Your donation allows us to keep sending journalists to speak to both sides of the story.
The Independent is trusted by Americans across the entire political spectrum. And unlike many other quality news outlets, we choose not to lock Americans out of our reporting and analysis with paywalls. We believe quality journalism should be available to everyone, paid for by those who can afford it.
Your support makes all the difference.Not all arts reviews appear on our arts pages. With a live event – a concert, say, or the opening of a play – we put them in the news pages under the title “First Night”. It’s an established way of doing things, but it struck me this week that some First Nights are not quite what they seem.
On page 3 of Wednesday’s paper, we published a prominent First Night review of a radio programme – a Tom Stoppard creation called Darkside based on Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon album. I looked at the piece and thought, damn, I’d have liked to hear that. Except that what we were reviewing wasn’t quite a First Night – it was actually an advance broadcast of the programme at an invitation-only “happening”, as we described it, at the BBC. This was clearly an event worth covering, but should we have called it a “First Night”?
We mere mortals get the chance to hear Darkside when it is broadcast on Radio 2 over the August bank holiday weekend, and no doubt we’ll review it all over again in the Radio column. With so much advance activity around arts events, the whole First Night concept is becoming increasingly blurred.
Wheels of misfortune
We rode into a pothole with some of our cycling coverage this week, starting with our news report on Monday of the London-Surrey ride featuring 17,000 amateurs. A picture caption referred to some of them passing the Ritz hotel, but you did not have to look very closely to see that the cyclists were not amateurs at all but riders in the professsionals’ race that took place some hours later. Cycling caption-itis struck again the next day when we said that the 2014 Tour de France “will feature this year’s winner Chris Froome”. Really? So sure? A lot can happen between now and next July.
A spell in Sussex
We celebrated Sussex’s non-conformism in a feature last Saturday and broke with convention ourselves with our spelling of Lewes in a graphic accompanying the piece. Lewis? Try the Hebrides.
Guy Keleny is away
Join our commenting forum
Join thought-provoking conversations, follow other Independent readers and see their replies
Comments