Fact-Checking the Chronicle. And failing.

Melissa sent me a link to this article about San Francisco after Pearl Harbor. It's a good article for a number of reasons, but I was struck by this sentence: "Chronicle City Editor John Bruce dispatched cub reporter David Perlman to the roof of the building with binoculars to watch out for enemy planes. Perlman, now the paper's science editor, did report one plane: It turned out to be a star." I was sure there had been some mistake.

I fired off a note to Carl Nolte, the author, and asked if the two David Perlmans were in fact the same person, since a cub reporter in 1941 would be at least 85 today. Nolte wrote me back, "It is the same David Perlman. he is 87; writes like sixty." Imagine having someone on your newsroom staff with 65 years of experience in the field. Pretty amazing.