sparrow false start

The world-wide prominence of the beautiful island, allied with the usefulness of teh Internets, never ceases to astonish.

Rottnest has had a mention on the Huffington Post: Craig Silverman, the bloke who does Regret The Error, has awarded a new journalism award to someone who corrected a Rotto error and the winner is not a million miles from Thomson Bay.

David (excellent name) Hummerston, the readers' editor at The West, has won the prestigious and inaugural Ian Mayes Award for Writing Wrongs.

'Mayes has agreed with my suggestion for the first recipient of the award. He is David Hummerston, the Saturday editor/editorial counsellor and readers' editor of the West Australian. Yes, the man wears many hats. In addition to everlasting fame, Hummerston will receive a signed copy of Ian Mayes' book, Journalism Right and Wrong: Ethical and other issues raised by readers in the Guardian's Open Door Column,' Silverman reports.

He gives samples of Hummerston's work, including this gem: 'Birdbrains: We swiftly swallowed the information supplied to us which described a photo of a bird in flight as a Rottnest Island Sparrow (The science of fine photography, page 19, August 16). As any eagle-eyed ornithologist would attest it was, of course, the much less rare Welcome Sparrow.'

Rotto Bloggo regrets we didn't spot this error and complain to the readers' editor.

Accompnaying photo is of...we have no idea. But it's a bird we saw on Rotto.