But at the same time, as Herald Senior Editor/News Manny Garcia told me, The Herald is shortchanging its readers if it allows officials to go ''reporter shopping'' in search of favorable coverage. For this story, The Herald brought in a second reporter, Amy Sherman, a general-assignment writer who has covered the County Commission and still had access to the mayor. With Christensen at her side, she telephoned the mayor to interview her about the vote.

The mayor clearly was unprepared. The vote had taken place 10 months earlier and she couldn't remember it, she now says, and I believe her. She should have taken the reporters' questions and investigated the matter. Saying ''no comment'' is almost as damaging as lying. But Herald reporters are trained to be reasonable and responsible, Garcia said. They usually allow you to get back within a reasonable amount of time. But you should ask for that leeway.

''I couldn't understand how I let that vote pass me by,'' Ritter said. ``But Amy wanted her answers then, and so I spoke to her and gave answers to the questions she asked me.''

Ritter accepted it as true that she had voted for the measure but insisted that her husband didn't lobby for Arena Operating Company, but rather for a related but still separate company. There was no conflict of interest in her vote, she insisted.

The reporters had extensive documented proof otherwise, however, and Ritter says that her husband later told her they were right. ''I didn't know,'' she said.

The story ran on a Sunday. On Monday, Ritter had her regular appointment with county attorney Jeffrey Newton. 'He said to me: `Are you sure you were there?' '' she recounted. ``I asked why.''

Newton, she said, scours the agenda each week on his own in search of conflicts of interest. He was concerned, because of the Miami Herald story, that he hadn't done his job. The minutes that Herald reporters saw indicated that Ritter was ''present'' for the vote. But Newton asked a staffer to check the videotape. Says Ritter: ``My chair was empty.''

Ritter then checked her calendar and saw that she had been at a town hall meeting in Tamarac, and had arrived late for the Commission meeting.

But what about the minutes? They record her as present when the meeting was called to order. The Arena insurance vote was the first item to be voted on, but there were 60 other items on the ''consent agenda.'' These are items on which no one has asked for debate and so are passed without discussion.

The minutes do not even give a vote count. Two subsequent items on the agenda, however, are individual items. After both, the minutes show Ritter was absent.

LESSONS TO LEARN?

The reporters are flagellating themselves. ''I felt the earth shift under me on this,'' says Christensen. ``No. 1, no one wants to write something incorrect, and No. 2, end up with a story that's unfair.''

''The onus is on us to check the facts,'' said Sherman, who says she is doubly disturbed she missed a message on her office phone from the mayor that Monday asking for a correction. Sherman says she was at The Herald's Pembroke Pines office that Monday, and was out with a sick child the next day.

The first anyone at The Herald knew of the error was when the mayor issued a press release that Tuesday saying she had requested a correction but that, ``The Miami Herald has still failed to correct or retract their false statements.''

Herald editors reviewed the videotapes that Wednesday and ran the front-page correction that Thursday.

One good outcome is that officials now say they will log more-accurate minutes.

Ritter is thankful for the correction, but nonetheless bitter because she says many more people read the Sunday paper than the Thursday one. She has encountered many voters unaware of the correction, she said. ''The damage may not be able to be repaired,'' she said.

One hopes so, for if there is any lesson in all this, it is that there is no real lesson. These were understandable errors all around, and are part of what makes us all human. Elected officials should understand they don't have the luxury of not talking to reporters, who aren't acting on their own behalf but on behalf of the public. Ignoring a reporter is to ignore one's constituents.

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