What was your biggest goof, typo, etc.?

Had a former boss who wrote, " ... pulled up and took a baseline shit." Annnnd, it made the paper. Ouch.

 

Biggest life screwup: Trusting that the editor who fired me based on vendetta really did believe that my institutional knowledge meant something. Biggest work screwup: When I was working for a weekly shop in Richlands, Va., I was writing a headline on a story which said the daughters of alcoholics were prone to being alcoholics. So my headline read: "Daughters of Alcoholics Prone."

 

Is there such thing as an obvious Splash reference?

 

Wasn't technically MY screw-up (it was the guys in composition) but was working desk on a Monday. Small shop. I laid out the four pages, saw them printed out and then watched as the ads are placed on. Then I took off. Paper comes out next day. Check it, and the sport section we ran THE MONDAY OF THE WEEK BEFORE is what ran. Our comp guy had screwed something up, went back into the system to get the pages, opened the wrong Monday, printed it and sent it back. Mortifying.

 

It sucked when my tabloid product referred to the cover story inside, and my paginator was way dumb enough to put something else on that page instead.

 

When I invented a new fish in a label hed on our fishing report. Anyone ever caught a "striped ass" instead of a striped bass?

 

Four teams each from two districts combine into the regional basketball tournament each postseason. First year on the job, two-man department in theory but can never seem to have two people hired at once, so it's just me.

So about two months into the job, for my first basketball postseason, I start asking around for some of the history, get told that "No team from District X has won down there in forever." Pull up previous years' stories, and the last one says "No team from District X has won down at the ABC Regional in 15 years."

Okay, so when District X actually goes 2-2 against District Y on the first day, I make a huge deal about it. Big 72 point headline and lede about how the 15-year losing streak is broken. That afternoon I get a few e-mails from various District X coaches saying they'd won games at the regional in the past 15 years. Apparently, the previous writer had meant that no District X team had won the whole tournament in 15 years, not just a game. It had only been six years or something since they'd won a game.

 

One of the biggest typos I made was caught by the desk.

Instead of School for the Deaf I wrote School for the Death

 

Soccer hed: "Germans Give U.S. Team Das Boot."

As movie fans know, "das boot" translates to "the boat."

 

The very slight typing differential between "pubic" and "public" becomes extraordinarily more profound when the mistaken version is followed by "display of affection."

 

I was news editor of my college paper. We had Bill Clinton and Pat Buchanan visit campus in the same week, so I blew out the front page with a killer layout, donkey, elephant, the whole fuckin' 9, right? Huge pix of both above the fold. Well the fucking printer switches the photos. So you have "Bill Clinton" under Buchanan's photo, and vice versa, not to mention on the wrong sides with the wrong animals.

So the paper comes out the morning Clinton arrives to deliver his speech on campus. Somebody puts the paper in front of him and he autographs the damn thing. What I wouldn't give to have a copy of that now....

But I wasn't anywhere near. I was holed up in my dorm room bawling my eyes out.

 

A bit off topic, but if you guys are ever writing off an iPad, iPhone, etc. (they carry their own WiFi, so I've done it a few times) be extra careful. Autocorrect can fuck you in so many ways. Like turning a misspelled flick into fuck. That one almost got past me.