Gazing Into the Rear View Mirror

“I see that you have made three spelling mistakes.”

Those were the last words of Thomas De Mahay, Marquis de Favras, who was executed in 1790 during the French Revolution. Arrested by revolutionaries and accused of trying to help Louis XVI escape from France, the Marquis was convicted of treason and sentenced to die. Apparently an editor to the end, he uttered the above words after being handed a paper containing his official death sentence while on the way to the scaffold.

Sometimes, I fear the Marquis’ fate will be my own. Not the guillotine, hopefully, but the editor-til-death part, especially whenever I receive my most recently printed copies of Insurance Journal. Invariably there are mistakes, even after I worked my hardest and darnedest to make sure every comma, period and apostrophe landed in the right place.

If misplaced commas and apostrophes were the only problem that would be one thing. Misspelling the names of people and companies, listing stories with the wrong page numbers on the table of contents–somehow no matter how many times I look at the copy for each issue, these things slip in. So with the final issue of 2004 I wish to take the opportunity to apologize to all those whose names, occupations, words, thoughts and deeds I’ve bungled in print. Promise–I didn’t do it on purpose!

As each year comes to a close a lot of us take the opportunity to look back at the previous 12 months and ask ourselves: “Gee, if I knew then what I know now would I have done things differently?”

That certainly may be the case with those large insurance entities now under scrutiny for alleged bid rigging and compensation irregularities. The investigation begun by New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer–certainly the top insurance story of the year in anybody’s book–has spawned probes by attorneys general and insurance commissioners in numerous states across the nation, including Arkansas. It will be interesting to see how this story unfolds over the coming months. A likely result of the investigations will be expanded regulations regarding compensation disclosure requirements for brokers. Another outcome may be that it will benefit smaller agents and brokers by providing opportunities to serve customers they may not have been able to access previously.

It’s been a great year for Insurance Journal. We went “national” in January 2004, adding three new regional print editions and expanding our presence on the Web. Not only did we survive those challenges, we thrived, thanks to the support of our readers and advertisers.

I’m sure we’ll do a lot of gazing into the rear view mirror over the next few weeks and months to see what we could have done better, so if you have any suggestions, please don’t hesitate to let us know.

Until then, happy reading and happy holidays!