We could have done better

So in place of infallibility, we offer humility | Joel Belz

Any publication worth its salt takes time now and then to stop and ask: Could we have done that a little better than we did it? The answer, almost always, is yes. We take our task seriously--but ourselves a little less so. When we can no longer acknowledge a few goofups in our work, we've come to think much more highly of ourselves than we ought to. So here are four specific examples of things WORLD could have done better:

(1) In the last three years, I have beat up pretty severely on the United States Postal Service. I've written more frequently, and more passionately, on a few other subjects--but not by much. It's as simple as this: If we can't deliver your copy of WORLD in timely fashion, we're out of business. So I've been angry, and I'm angry again this week, when I get reports that a number of you are still getting two issues of WORLD in the same mail, even though we mailed them a full week apart; or that you're getting WORLD a week or 10 days later than you should; or that there are issues you never got at all.