Two quotes, or not two quotes?

Despite the NFL scouting combine and impending free agency, my first blog post after a lengthy hiatus was inspired by two Chicago Tribune pieces about the Chicago Bulls and the NBA trading deadline. And my interest isn't even about the story itself -- it's about the reporting.

Here's a quote from a Rick Morissey column:

"Because of the economics of the business, we could be sitting here a year from now at the trading deadline with some expiring contracts and some chips, and there may become a significant player available because a team's not going to be able to keep him," Paxson said.
"You don't know. We're looking at this as, there's a real chance given the state of the league right now that those type of deals may come about."

Here's the same quote (presumably) from a K.C. Johnson article:

"But because of the economics of the business now, we could be sitting here a year from now at the trade deadline with some expiring contracts, and there may be a significant player available because a team might not be able to keep him. There's a real chance given the state of the league now that those types of deals may come up."

We'll presume that both of these interpretations are from one quote given by Bulls general manager John Paxson, which both writers either directly transcribed and/or digitally recorded. That being said, there appears to be a reason people are keen to say that they were misquoted.

Using the first quote as a base, the second has several words that are either added or missing -- "now" "trading" "and some chips" "become" "is" "not going to" "right" "about" -- not including two intro sections that may have been excluded for stylistic reasons. That's 12 words, and the first base quote is 66 words long -- so approximately a 20 percent variance between the two.

I have noticed this phenomenon several times in the Tribune, particularly in their postgame Bears section, where the same quote may be repeated six to eight times across various stories and columns, with every piece including a slightly different recollection of the actual quote. Just as in the above example, those differences can be considered minor -- added or dropped prepositions (as long as it's not "not"), or innocuous synonyms.

This particular case stood out to me because the two quotes were situated less than six inches apart on the same page, making their differences readily apparent. As a current copy editor, and someone who has some experience reporting, I find the differences between the quotes appalling.

I'm not bothered, however, because the differences represent inaccuracies.

It's practically impossible to write down a quote with 100 percent accuracy, due to the difficulty of our brain processing past information (what they said, which you are writing down), current information (what they are saying, which you are listening to) and future information (what they will say, which you are naturally trying to predict) all at the same time.

The latter even accounts for many transcribing errors because there are common phrases that we expect people to say, which can cause reporters to record words that are never actually said. It even takes me two to four times to accurately transcribe as few as two sentences from a taped recording.

What annoys me is the fact that the Tribune sports department didn't take the time to portray the same quote in the same way. When under impending deadline, I can understand why the cross-checking process might not occur. In most cases, however, there is ample time to keep the quotes consistent, which demonstrates editorial oversight and limits accusations of fabricating quotes.

There are several journalistic philosophies about quotes, and I'm not arguing for or against any in particular. I just think that a publication should remain consistent with whichever policy they choose (which the Tribune may very well be doing by allowing their writers to have moderately free reign) and hope that the same quotes aren't represented differently out of laziness or ignorance.