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Rolling Stone Magazine Apologizes After Report on Rape Story

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RICHMOND, Va. (AP) - A report from the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism says a Rolling Stone magazine article about an alleged rape on the University of Virginia campus was a "story of journalistic failure that was avoidable."           

Published on the magazine's website Sunday night, the report said that "the failure encompassed reporting, editing, editorial supervision and fact-checking."

The report said Rolling Stone's article may cast doubt on future accusations of rape. It also damaged the reputation of the Phi Kappa Psi chapter at U.Va. and depicted the university administration as neglectful.

Rolling Stone Managing Editor Will Dana posted an apology on the publication's website Sunday night and said the magazine was officially retracting the story.

The magazine is promising to improve its editorial practices following the journalism school's scathing review of the widely discredited story. But it is not firing any of the people responsible for the mistakes. 

The magazine's publisher, Jann S. Wenner, told The New York Times that Sabrina Erdely would continue to write for the magazine and that neither her editor nor Dana would be fired.

Highlights of Report

- Editorial failures encompassed reporting, editing, editorial supervision and fact-checking.

- There was no evidence, however, that the writer, Sabrina Rubin Erdely, invented facts.

- The magazine failed to investigate reporting leads even when the woman who claimed to have been raped, identified in the story as only as "Jackie," had not specifically asked them not to.

- The editors made judgments about attribution, fact-checking and verification that greatly increased their risks of error.

- While Rolling Stone's editorial staff has shrunk by 25 percent since 2008, the problem was not a lack of resources, but a methodology that failed to find and debate problems with reporting or listen to questions from fact-checkers.

- The magazine needs better policies about reporting practices, use of pseudonyms and attribution.

- The fact checkers should have been more assertive about questioning editorial decisions.

Don Rush is the News Director at Delmarva Public Media. An award-winning journalist, Don reports major local issues of the day, from sea level rise, to urban development, to the changing demographics of Delmarva.