Media

OOPS LOG Adds Table Of Contents; Bob Callahan Says It Is Now A Reference Work

The subheadings have subheadings. The index is alphabetized twice, once by outlet and once by regret.

The OOPS LOG, Bob Callahan's running alphabetical count of other outlets' Trump corrections, passed nine hundred entries this week and immediately developed the problem every growing collection develops. Nobody could find anything. On Thursday the media desk added a table of contents. Bob says this makes it a reference work.

The log started as a legal pad. It became a spreadsheet, then a spreadsheet with tabs, then tabs with subheadings, and in July it annexed the Euphemism Wing. The subheadings now have subheadings. The table of contents was not an ambition. It was a surrender.

"Any idiot can keep a list. Keeping one somebody else can use, that is a career. I did not set out to have a career. I set out to have a grudge with page numbers." Bob Callahan

The Front Matter

The front matter runs to nine pages: a preface, a note on methodology, and a two-page explanation of why clarifications and corrections are filed separately and will remain so. The methodology note is longer than the preface. The preface is one sentence. It reads, in full, They knew.

Page numbers arrived with a complication. The Euphemism Wing admits new entries continuously, and every admission shifted everything filed after it, which meant a citation was accurate until roughly lunchtime. Bob gave the Wing its own series, W-1 forward, and noted that this is the same solution the Library of Congress reached and approximately as much fun.

The Two Indexes

The first index is alphabetical by outlet, as it has been since 2023. The second is alphabetical by regret: Regretted Immediately, Regretted After The Segment, Regretted On Air By Somebody Who Did Not Write It, Regretted In A Memo That Leaked, Not Regretted, and Filed As Growth. The last category is the longest. Bob says that is not a joke about the industry, it is the count.

A network standards editor asked to review her outlet's section before publication. Bob explained that a reference work is open to the public by definition and asked whether she wanted the outlet index or the regret index. She asked which was shorter. He said that depends on the outlet, and that hers was not the shorter one.

A university librarian brought in to review the structure recommended a finding aid and a controlled vocabulary, then asked whether the collection had a retention schedule. Bob said nothing leaves. She said that is a collection policy, not a retention schedule. Bob wrote that down and filed it under the preface.

By Friday the log had a table of contents, two indexes, a numbering series, and a finding aid, and for the first time in its history it was easier to navigate than to defend. Bob marked the occasion by finishing his sandwich and opening the back matter with a single tab, Appendix A: The Ones They Never Ran.

Desk note: The count stood at 903 as of Friday lunch. Bob asks that it be described as of Friday lunch.