As we’ve discussed in previous blogs, the process of creating high volumes of high quality articles has taken years to refine.
From content creation, through to editing, each stage is handled by a specialist to ensure the very highest possible quality.
One of the more important stages in any of our writing is the fact check and Tourism Media employs a number of eagle-eyed fact checkers. The job of these specialists is to ensure that nothing leaves our offices that is factually incorrect or cannot be verified by a credible source.
With more than 2,400 texts produced annually, it is very easy for small facts to slip through unnoticed.
One of Tourism Media’s fact checkers, Dillon Murphy, says that sometimes even the smallest omission or typo can make an enormous difference to the information provided in a text.
“In my very first week here, I picked up an error that described the Roman Empire as 1.9 square miles, when in fact, it should have been 1.9 million square miles,” he said. “Kind of changes how you feel about the Roman Empire, right?”
“Another time, one of the texts said that there had been a city of a million people that was razed in the 1960s. I was shocked that I hadn’t heard about this terrible atrocity until I checked up on it and discovered that it had actually occurred in the 1760s. Just a few centuries off!”
On a more serious note, it is also important when dealing with travel information that we get our facts right. We need to be sure that we don’t tell people to walk through a park at night if it is known to be dangerous, for example.
Our fact checkers are also trained to be very careful of any grand claims such as “The Highest Roller Coaster in the World” or “The Most Popular Tourist Destination in the Country.”
“It’s amazing, for example,” says Dillon, “how many zoos claim to be the only ones where you can see endangered giant pandas.”
Sometimes the errors our fact checkers pick up are not the result of typos, but the result of our script writers getting caught up in the magic of a destination.
As Matthew Bridges, Library Manager and Fact Checker, says, “The script writers work to craft a story around a destination but it is our job to ensure that they don’t take too much artistic licence with the facts.”
It might be as simple as the writer telling travellers to climb the 669 steps, when in fact, there are 704 or, it might be something as culturally significant as the story behind how Arthur Guinness created his world-famous brew in Dublin.
“To many people, details like this might not matter,” says Matthew. “But knowing our writing is factually accurate as well as high quality gives our team a great deal of satisfaction.”
