Correction o' the day

Technically, I guess it's the booboo of the week because it was in last Thursday's LA Weekly issue. But I just noticed:

The article “Nasty Battle for Classroom Control” [March 2–8] misspelled the names of Alice Callaghan, Neal Kleiner and the Jardin de la Infancia school. Also, two incumbents ran for school board, not three, and Compton is encircled by LAUSD but not part of it.

Ah, the backstory is what makes it interesting. The piece, and the errors, were by freelancer Doug Lasken. His byline carried no other identifying information, but he is an LAUSD teacher and UTLA activist who helped organize union members against bilingual education in the 1990s. He was quoted then in Jill Stewart stories that railed against bilingual education, and it was Stewart, as deputy editor in charge of news at the Weekly, who asked Lasken to write the paper's roundup on school board contests. That proved to be a risky proposition since Lasken is inexperienced as a reporter and the bean counters at VVM/New Times eliminated the Weekly's fact-checking crew. Lasken's gaffes did not go unnoticed, spurring emails to LA Observed from outraged Weekly staffers and politically savvy Weekly readers. This was an example:

In the current issue, I count no fewer than eight factual errors in Doug Lasken's story on school board races. From the minor -- Alice Callahan should be Alice Callaghan, Neal Leiner should be Neal Kleiner -- to the major -- two incumbents are up for re-election, not three; and one of those two, not three, faces well-financed opponents backed by the mayor; and L.A. Unified does not take in Compton as the story asserts. Oh, and [David] Tokofsky does not support Bennett Kayser.

Stewart's earlier hiring of gadfly/blogger/candidate Zuma Dogg to write about urban planning also raised eyebrows within the newsroom and at City Hall, where Zuma is known as the guy in the knit cap who raps at council meetings to get exposure on Channel 35 and brags on his blog that "I don't like to read."