The one thing that worries me whenever I write anything destined for print is how devilishly circumstances can change in the time between writer submission and actual publication. By “change” I mean anything that makes my work irrelevant, inaccurate, or just plain wrong…

It happens often when your beat is restaurants. Usually, it’s just harmless stuff that you can laugh off. Take, for example, the delays that have so befuddled the Corner Suite Bistro De Luxe. The restaurateurs behind it told me back in May that it would open in July and I wrote a feature story for Vancouver magazine’s July issue that said as much, but it’s the middle of October now and it still isn’t open.

And then there are the fine print mistakes and typos that can sting like whisky on a split lip. I’ve had a hand in several of these, and they’re always embarrassing. When I reviewed the waterfront restaurant Nu back in 2006, for example, the headline was supposed to be a play on the name, but instead of “Nu Standards In Dining” it went out to print as “No Standards In Dining”. Like, ouch.

Sometimes I too get bittersweetly bitten. Several times have I seen Scout get a nice plug in the paper, in a magazine, or on TV but the announcer/writer gets the url wrong. Just last week, when I was named one of the Top 40 Foodies Under 40 by Western Living (thank you), I received a text from a family member that just read “Oops, see WL”. The print issue had Scout’s web address as scout.ca instead of scoutmagazine.ca. After reading flattering things about this website, readers were sent instead to one dealing with amateur sports stars. No big deal. The online version had it fixed. Shit happens.

But nothing compares to the embarrassment heaped this week upon the oft-kissed feet of Joanne Kates, the much-maligned restaurant critic for Toronto edition of the Globe & Mail (at least that’s how I remember her from my years working in Toronto restaurants).

The “Countess of Yorkville”, as we called her, submitted a glowing review of Ruby Chinese Restaurant – a popular place located in the frozen depths of Scarberia – and in the dangerous time between then and the date of publication (Saturday morning), something very bad happened. On the same day that the Kates’ review ran, CityTV posted a report saying the same restaurant was forced to close after dozens of its customers were waylaid with salmonella poisoning. Tragically, one elderly man has actually died. The Globe wisely pulled the online review, entitled “From Its Soup To Its Peking Duck, Ruby Is A Gem Of A Resto”, quickly, but the print edition was already streeted. Oops.

See the two pieces side by side here, with a little extra Toronto Star shadenfreude here (read the last line for pith’s sake).

At the WE, the submission to print delay is four days, but at the Globe I imagine it’s at least a week, maybe more. I’ve caught errors with less than 24 hours to go before print, but this debacle looks to have seen a tighter window of fixability. In other words, I doubt there was anything they could have done.

Moral of the story: invest in the internet. Even if we publish a story riddled with errors both factual and grammatical, we just keeping editing it without telling anyone.

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