The Mistakes We Make (EDITORS NOTE)

The journalism business, like any other business, has its wins and losses. Great days and not so great. Every other Thursday is the day we ship our newest issue off to the printer. Those are great days. We’ve reached another finish line, and I’m excited about what our staff has done. I know we have told some great stories and I’m feeling confident.

Then the doubt starts to creep in. Are there misspelled words? An unfortunate typo? It’s amazing what effect those things can have on otherwise good reporting.

And that’s why I was sick when I got an email from Jan Holland, a prominent Realtor in our area and a friend of the Business Journal, just two days after our March 14 issue went to the printer.

Jan wasn’t happy with me, and I couldn’t blame her. The March 14 issue included our annual lists of top-producing real estate agents and firms, based on their 2015 sales volume. The numbers were provided to us with the help of the Northwest Arkansas Board of Realtors, and showed another strong year for the local real estate industry.

NABOR provides the yearly data, but I still have to type the numbers into our system. And, unfortunately, there were two major mistakes on my part when entering in the total sales volume for two people — Jan Holland of Coldwell Banker Harris McHaney Faucette and Mel Reed of Keller Williams Market Pro Realty. I entered the incorrect sales amounts for both.

These are the not so great days.

It was made even worse considering that Jan was not only the top Coldwell Banker agent in our area last year, she was the top-producing Coldwell Banker agent in the entire state. But that’s not what was reflected in our publication.

 Had the correct amounts been entered, Jan would check in at No. 6 ($23.57 million) and Mel at No. 25 ($11.9 million) on our list of 192 agents with at least $3.5 million in residential sales last year.

It was a big mistake for me, but I am human and mistakes do happen. My apologies to both Jan and Mel, and to our readers.

In the meantime, I hope you will continue to engage with us to talk about things — even everything we’re doing wrong.

I would prefer, though, to discuss what we are doing right.

That helps with the wins and losses.