Glad, Well, and Good

On Friday I ran an item about New Yorker writer Malcolm Gladwell, who, according to a source, had ignored a warning from a
fact-checker, resulting in an embarrassing correction for the magazine.

Ironically enough, that item could have used more rigorous verification. Although I had attempted to contact Gladwell to confirm the account, I didn't hear back from him until last night, when he got in touch to dispute my source's version of events.

Although Gladwell takes full responsibility for the mistake -- an inaccurate characterization of a passage from the book The Bell Curve -- he insists he was not alerted to his error before the piece's publication.

"It never came up. I wish it had," he says. "If I'd known it was an error, I'd have corrected it beforehand in a heartbeat. If you know anything about The New Yorker's fact-checking process, you'd know it's impossible" for the events described in my item to have taken place, he adds.

David Remnick, The New Yorker's editor in chief, says the breakdown occurred as the piece was being closed. A question arose about the passage from The Bell Curve, but Gladwell had not submitted the text to the fact-checking department as part of his research materials. "We didn't have time" to find a copy of the book, says Remnick, "and Malcolm thought he was sure of what it said, and we went with it, and we were wrong, and we corrected it."

Gladwell said there "was no kind of showdown. At no time did anyone confront me with the truth. I relied on my memory, and my memory was wrong."

As for my claim that Gladwell is the "bane" of New Yorker fact-checkers, while insiders say his inaccessibility has been a recurring source of headaches, Remnick insists it's a non-issue. "Malcolm doesn't have a quote-unquote problem with the checking department."

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