All-round Apologies and Retractions

The Standard-Examiner and Weber County Forum fess up and apologize for leaping to unwarranted conclusions
We're only human, except for your blogmeister, who is a bona-fide and admitted space alien

By Curmudgeon

Since the topic in the lower article comments thread seems to have turned to a discussion of the Standard-Examiner's various policies, this seems like a good spot to point out the lead editorial in today's, Thursday's Std-Ex. It is a mea culpa and retraction of the Standard's editorial a couple of days ago blasting the state legislature for cutting the time allowed to submit petitions for referenda by six weeks. Only problem is, the legislature did not do that. The new dates do not apply to state referenda, only local ones. Mr. Porter's retraction and apology can be found here.

The correction and apology are fulsome, straight up, and appear in the most prominent slot of the print editorial page. [More on that in a bit.] And the apology is signed. Kudos to Mr. Porter and the Std-Ex for not burying all this in a brief note under "Corrections." Better not to have muffed it at all, but having done it, best to get it fixed, fess up and do it fast and visibly. The Std-Ex and Mr. Porter handled their gaffe well.

Except... when I went onto the free web page and clicked "Opinion" to get a link to the editorial, all that came up was today's second editorial, not the lead one, which was Mr. Porter's retraction and apology. Why the Std-Ex should have included that prominently [and rightly] on the pages of the print edition, but not on the web edition [except behind the subscription wall] escapes me.

Speaking of apologies and retractions, now it's my turn. Based on Mr. Trentelman's original reporting that the legislature had chopped six weeks out of the time to file referendum petitions, I posted a rant... and it was a rant... here denouncing the Republican legislative majority for having done what, it turns out, they had not done. The rant, which was wholly unwarranted, is hereby retracted and my apologies to the Republican leaders, and members of the House and Senate, for criticizing them unfairly.