Mea culpa

Welcome to this week’s Reno News & Review.

I’ve often said that we here at the RN&R are equal opportunity offenders. It’s not that we go out of our way to irritate people—OK, maybe sometimes with certain members of the elite elected class—but on occasion, the honest expression of opinion is offensive. Like with restaurants, the experience our reviewer has can be unlike the experience someone else has had, and it angers people who’ve had a different experience. Most of our readers know this, and they take our book, movie, album and restaurant reviews with the grain of salt every expression of opinion deserves.

But with the knowledge that journalism can be offensive with intent comes the acknowledgment that sometimes we can be offensive accidentally. And I hate that. It diminishes the effect of when we do it on purpose.

Last week, in the story “Polo express,” we did just that. We ran a photo of the owner of the Polo Lounge Frank Perez posing with a random customer. Due to a whole series of errors on our part, from the photographer failing to put information on the photo file to an editor making an incorrect assumption to me not seeing what was only obvious, in the caption, we identified the woman pictured with Frank as his wife, Gena.

Yes, that kind of thing happens. Upon publication and the discovery of the error, we fixed it immediately online, but still, people’s feelings were hurt through no fault of their own, and this newspaper looked stupid.

I’d like to offer my personal apologies to both the Perezes and also to apologize to anyone else who was confused by our mistake.