Reign of Error - Mistakes are More Common then they Should be

In the article "Reign of Error" by Jack Shaffer, the author describes how poorly newspapers have been in correcting errors within their stories. Things such as names, ages and other important information are being reported incorrectly and an editor of the New York Times is calling the problem a 'cancer'. This is very surprising news to me because I would have thought mistakes on common information such as names would be very limited. I know when I write stories names and ages and hometowns are probably some of the easiest pieces of information to obtain.
It is argued that the availablility of corrections might cause the increase in reported corrections, but I go the other way and attribute it to negligence. I think many editors assume that names and other common information will be correct so they don't check that information as closely as grammar and AP style mistakes. Maybe it's time to take a step back and take a little more time to make sure the easy information is correct.