Anna Davlantes gets an F

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: Give Davlantes an �F� for opening night on Fox : By Robert Feder : : Anyone who�s ever attended the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University is familiar with something called �The Medill F.� Designed to drive home the importance of accuracy, it refers to the automatic failure given to a student who makes a factual error on a story. Even something as simple as misspelling a name or a title can earn the dreaded �Medill F.� : Anna Davlantes, a 1993 Medill graduate herself, deserved one on Monday night. : In her heralded debut as a star reporter and contributing news anchor for WFLD-Channel 32, Davlantes delivered a story on the Fox-owned station�s 9 p.m. newscast in which she repeatedly got the names of the principal subjects wrong. : In a piece she wrote and reported on her own, Davlantes told the story of a Chicago woman who suffered brain damage and fell into a coma after she was involved in a taxi cab accident. Although doctors told her husband that her chances of survival were nil, the woman made a miraculous recovery and now is learning to walk again. : Twice in the piece, Davlantes referred to the woman and her husband as �Wilburg.� That�s also what the on-screen graphic said. But as a newsroom co-worker who was familiar with the family pointed out after the story aired, their actual name is �Kilburg.� : Ooops. : For the version of the story posted on Channel 32�s website, Davlantes recorded a new audio track with the family�s name corrected. But even after that, the text version of the story � under Davlantes� own byline � showed the name as �Kilburn� for more than 16 hours before it finally was fixed Tuesday afternoon. (That error was later attributed to a Fox web editor.) : Davlantes did not respond to my inquiry about the mistake. But on Tuesday�s 9 p.m. newscast, she told viewers: �Last night we gave you conflicting information on the family�s last name.� Another source said she �felt horrible� when she realized what she had done and called the Kilburg family to apologize. : In fairness, Davlantes� debut otherwise came off well, prompting kudos from Mike Renda, the station�s vice president and general manager, and resulting in what Lewis Lazare called a �significant bump up in the ratings.� (Although Channel 32�s main competitor, Tribune Co.-owned WGN-Channel 9, had its late news Monday delayed by a Bulls broadcast.) : �When you�re out front, you�re an easy target,� one friend said of those who would exploit Davlantes� embarrassment. �Monday was an impossibly long and difficult day for Anna. She was under a great deal of pressure and was being pulled in a million different directions to get everything done.� : All are perfectly understandable extenuating circumstances. But none would ever pass muster in any freshman newswriting class at Medill. : Ed. Note: This post was updated at 7:11AM. Davlantes� Medill graduation date was corrected from what the school provided.

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