The New Yorker was launched in 1924. Initially, the magazine was somewhat sloppy with the facts. As Ben Yagoda writes in his history of The New Yorker, it's meticulous checking system didn't begin until 1927, when "a profile of Edin St. Vincent Millay was so riddled with errors that the poet's mother stormed into the magazine's offices and threatened to sue if an extensive correction was not run." The New Yorker's founder, Harold Ross, had a passion for accuracy. His biographer Thomas Kunkel says that Ross's obsessive concern that the magazine be irrefutable was partly defensive. In its "Newsbreaks" section, The New Yorker ridiculed other publications' inaccuracies. Ross was afraid the magazine would be tarred with its own brush. In a 1927 memo he wrote: "What with our making fun of other publications and what with the nature of the magazine, The New Yorker ought to be freer from typographical errors than any other publication....A SPECIAL EFFORT SHOULD BE MADE TO AVOID MISTAKES IN "THE NEW YORKER." By the mid-1970s, The New Yorker had seven checkers on staff. When Tina Brown became editor in 1992, there were eight. This number doubled during her tenure, partly as a result of an increase in the timely and controversial nature of the pieces published. In 2003, there were sixteen checkers at the magazine.
Sarah Harrison Smith, The Fact Checker's Bible: A Guide to Getting it Right, 2004
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