That day The News & Observer had run a front-page story saying a burglar had broken into a restaurant by ripping through the interior dry wall of the Curves for Women center next door. The story said Curves was vacant.

The story was wrong. The crime occurred in a Slender Lady fitness center, now closed, not the Curves for Women in a different shopping center several miles down the road.

The owner wanted the public to know that Curves for Women was very much open for business -- she'd already gotten several calls from customers asking whether Curves had closed. "January is our biggest month for new business, and I don't want people to think we're closed," she said.

Sure enough, The N&O had gotten the fitness centers mixed up. The paper ran a correction, after checking the information with police.

A small enough mistake, unintended, and understandable that it occurred. But the incident does remind us that small errors can have larger consequences. Not to mention misinforming or confusing the public. And -- drip, drip, drip -- eroding the newspaper's credibility with readers over time.

Errors are the low-grade virus of newspapers -- always there, mostly benign, sometimes flaring up in maddening eruptions of inaccuracy. In an era of public mistrust of the "mainstream media," fed by Internet scrutiny of the news, errors are dangerous to the long-term health of newspapers.

"Errors are a major contributor to an erosion in the level of trust in the press," writes Craig Silverman in a new book, "Regret the Error." "Once this trust begins to be lost, the rights of the press and indeed of speech itself are threatened. It is then a matter of time until laws are enacted that impinge on the press's right to publish accurate reports and alternate views that inform and encourage public discourse."

That someone could produce a 366-page book on newspaper errors -- or that anyone would read it -- is a surprise to me. But Silverman has plenty of material to work with, unfortunately, and his book is getting a lot of interest from those of us in the inky trade. He cites some amusing examples:

* From Newsweek: "In the original version of this report, Newsweek misquoted Falwell as referring to 'assault ministry.' In fact, Falwell was referring to 'a salt ministry,' -- a reference to Matthew 5:13, where Jesus says, 'Ye are the salt of the earth.' "

* From The Daily Mail (UK): "Mr Smith said in court, 'I am terribly sorry. I have a dull life and I suddenly wanted to break away.' He did not say, as we reported erroneously, 'I have a dull wife and I suddenly wanted to break away.' We apologise to Mr Smith, and to Mrs Smith."

Some of my favorite corrections come from The New York Times, which is scrupulous to the point of anal about correcting errors. Here's one from last summer (Forgive the length, but it's worth it):

"An article in some copies on Wednesday about congressional efforts to pass legislation to expand the government's electronic wiretapping powers misspelled -- yet again -- the surname of the attorney general of the United States, in three of four references. He is Alberto R. Gonzales, not Gonzalez. (The Times has misspelled Mr. Gonzales's name in at least 14 articles dating to 2001 when he became White House counsel. This year alone Mr. Gonzales's name has been misspelled in February and March, and in two articles in April.)"

The News & Observer, until recently anyway, has not been as forthcoming. I've been corresponding for the better part of a year with a Raleigh reader named David Thomas, who monitors N&O corrections and is irritated by those he considers incomplete. Here's an example from last year:

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