Dispatch from the Front Line: Waiting on the brink ... again

The Middle East. Canadian media. Montreal. And more!

Happy Monday, Line readers. We hope you’re enjoying the long weekend.

The Line’s policy on corrections, which is one we don’t often need to remind you all of (yay!), is that simple corrections (a typo, correcting a title, etc) can just be made to the document, especially if they’re caught immediately. But a larger editorial correction is something that we flag for our readers, both for editorial accuracy but also personal accountability. On that note, Line editor Gurney opens this dispatch with a mea culpa. In the latest episode of The Line Podcast, he referred at some length to a recent column in the Globe and Mail, but brain-cramped and misidentifed the author. Gurney referred to Jeff Simpson; the author was, in fact, Lawrence Martin. These are the most mortifying kinds of corrections because there’s no complicated process of editorial miscues that led to it. Gurney just flubbed the name.

For that, he apologizes — to our readers, listeners and viewers, and also to both Simpson and Martin. No excuses. We/he really regret(s) the error.

Speaking of which, here is the offending podcast. (The text description of the podcast has been updated to note the correction on all platforms, as well, of course.)

As always, the audio version of the podcast (along with a bunch of ways to subscribe to it) can be found here.

Like, subscribe, share it with your friends, share it with your enemies, leave us glowing reviews, and all that jazz. The Line counts on your support!

---

We've been a little reluctant to publish this dispatch. And that's only partially because it's hard to drag our asses back to our desks on a beautiful long weekend. The main reason we've been reluctant to hit publish is because events in the Middle East are balanced on a knife's edge and, if you'll excuse us a bit of superstition born of our newspaper days, Big Bad Things always happen the moment after the final deadline passes.