One of the worst days of my life

Well, shit.

Once he gets over this, it makes the story much better.

A funny typo is a good story. But, in years to come, a funny typo that got mentioned on the Tonight Show is going to be a great story.

 

I know. I must be one charming son of a bitch.

The lawsuit threat was just that, of course. I mentioned the guy's firing and misinterpreted the reason he was fired in print. He just asked for a clarification in the next day's paper. And his name to be spelled right in that clarification. Fair enough.

I emailed the other coach, apologizing and telling him I was under a lot of stress in my personal life, swamped at work, how that's no excuse for being so unprofessional, etc. etc. etc. He never responded, and he actually left his new job after like 8 weeks and moved across country. I never heard from him again.

It took about 6 months, but I can laugh about it now.

 

No one was harmed. You didn't cost anyone a scholarship. Mistakes were made that happened to be pretty funny. In the long run, accepting it for what it is with grace and a good sense of humor will say way more about you than that lede ever will.

Plus, if you just zen out and get the mental image of Mother Nature douching over a football field, and the objective hilarity of it, and I mean hilarious without being too overly vulgar and crude, you'll be able to laugh at the thought without feeling too bad about the mistake.

 

Seems like you wasted more time posting that you didn't know what was going on than you would have finding out, especially since there's another thread about it.

 

Aaron:

Misspellings happen.

I had one of our three or four biggest high schools, whose mascot was "Dons," misidentified in a lead as "Dongs." Might have just been reading SportsJournalists.com discussions about a mass PM of a few years ago . . .

Considering what you cover, and where you cover it, this day will likely be topped more than once in the future. So smile, and move forward.

 

worst thing that happened to me was in college at arizona state. i sent a stringer to cover a tennis match against arizona. he comes back with a story where one of the players was quoted "we wanted to kill them. we busted a can of whoop ass on them."

at first i thought, this kid never said this. i knew the athlete, and he was very reserved. but i didn't question it. even used it as a pull quote. next day, SID calls "um, we need to talk about that quote."

my fellow staffers made me a can of campbell's whoop ass, which has been on every desk i've ever sat at to remind me to always trust my instincts...

 

Wrong on one count.
We always cost a kid a scholarship.

 

I misspelled embarrassing in a headline once.

 

Hang in there, Aaron. As mentioned countless times here, you have plenty of company.

Here's a few "gems" from my shop:

- Editor left of o out of the word "county" in a headline
- Twice, the word "pubic" has appeared in headlines in place of "public" - once on the front page and once on our local editorial
- Our editor wrote a column and mentioned how his readers might have noticed his new logo in which he had shaved his mustache. However, our production folks (cut and paste in those days) ran his old logo with the column (we suspect it was intentional, too).
- Had a brief head appear as "man killed dead"
- Our editor penned an editorial about literacy and had this sentence: "If you can't spell the following words correctly, you should seek professional help" - he listed 10 words... and misspelled not one, not two but three of them.
- Same editor left the masthead off the FRONT page of the paper. (I shit you not). Fortunately, I was able to stop the presses and get 99.9 percent of the papers brought back. However, we had to scrap 13,000 copies.
- Had "shifty defense" appear without the F in "shifty"
- My biggest gaffe: had a hammer head the was supposed to read, "Sweet dreams" -- unfortunately, it came out, "Sweat dreams"

Keep your chin up, Aaron.

 

Aw, hell ... in my high school days writing for the local weekly newspaper when linotypes were still used, I wrote something like "Jerry Burroughs hit for 23 points" then the linotype operator messed up the spacing to "Jerry Burrough shit for 23 points" ... back then I was pissed. Today it's hilarious.

Also was paginating our fishing report page a few years ago, somehow "Striped Bass" came out "Striped Ass" ... lady called an asked how she could catch one of those!

 

Not a major foul up but in the misspelled name string here ... I covered a high school girls' soccer game this fall and a girl named Olivia I called Oliver. Her mother works at the paper. I felt bad about it and told her to apologize to her daughter. She laughed and said if that was the worst mistake she ever made, she'd be happy. I still say regularly "Tell Oliver I said hi."

One that wasn't embarrassing to me but pissed me off ... Our editor got a call from a guy that said he was retiring as a professional bull rider and wanted a story to let his local fans know. Problem was, I knew the guy because I went to school with him and told them on the spot he is a liar. Was told to do the story.

I went out and talked to him. He claimed to have won all these buckles, etc. I asked him to produce them. They were "stolen." I asked to see video of him actually on a bull. His VCR was broken. I asked for ANY kind of evidence. Nothing. I went online and called the pro bull riding organization. They'd never heard of him.

All of this I knew before I started, came back to the office and presented my case that the guy is a liar and didn't want to do the story. Was told to just do it. Wrote the story. The part I put in about the rodeo people having no record of him competing was taken out. We had about 50 calls discrediting him.

Needless to say, I was beyond pissed off. For about two weeks everywhere I went someone was piping up "Hey Joe, I'm retiring from the NFL, want to do a story on me?" "I'm retiring from NASCAR." "I'm retiring from baseball."

 

if anyone complains, just say you were blinded by the light.