mistakes

[MTM]

The worst -- Sandy Penis for a mayor named Sandy Genis due to a spellchecker burp.
When the copy editor was called into the editor's office the next day, fearing he'd be fired, the publisher said: "Next time remember she's not a penis, but a c*nt."
Others, a senior "panty" party, instead of pantry, and barbecued children on a lunch menu.

 

[schiezainc]

In my college newspaper, we put up a dummy cutline to gauge how much space we had layout-wise. Problem is, we never took it out. The cutline read: "This dude right here needs a name."

 

[apeman33]

This one was mine, all mine.

Ya know how "I" and "O" are next each other on the keyboard?

"Pleasanton's (whatever her name was) finished third in the shirt put with a distance of 99-5.25."

And no one told me about it until after 11 a.m. the next day. Our publisher, however, knew it was just a typo. He just said, "Now you know the spell checker includes obscene words."

I was told the Pleasanton chick had fun with it herself. She told people it was a cow-chip tossing contest.

 

[mustangj17]

worst mistake came in a headline i heard about from a prof.

A note saying good night actually got stuck into a headline accidently, so the headline about three basketball players leading a team to victory had the letters N, I and G, in it, right in a row.

Dont know how this was missed, but it got printed.

 

[shotglass]

Well, as far as my personal mistakes go, the headline "Caps grab Peeters" has to be right up there.

 

[deskslave]

Re: Galatin, for those like myself who had no clue...

http://library.findlaw.com/1999/Jun/1/127184.html

I love the bit near the end, in which Gannett attempted to claim it wasn't responsible, and the court found it was because "Gannett micromanaged every facet of the newspaper's operation and inserted its own Unit Manager as the publisher of the newspaper."

 

[mustangj17]

mmmmm..... barbecued children

The worst -- Sandy Penis for a mayor named Sandy Genis due to a spellchecker burp.
When the copy editor was called into the editor's office the next day, fearing he'd be fired, the publisher said: "Next time remember she's not a penis, but a c*nt."
Others, a senior "panty" party, instead of pantry, and barbecued children on a lunch menu.

 

[WazzuGrad00]

In a cutline, I mistyped New York as "Jew York."

Caught it as soon as I finished typing the sentence, and gasped loudly.

Probably would have been pretty bad if that had went to press.

 

[Tom Petty]

bookmark.

 

[jmm1412]

We had a major college player at the local school arrested for pubic intoxication in a sports-front headline.

Also had dummy type — referring to the subject of a refer as a liar — on sports front.

 

[Bob Slydell]

The Cliff's Note version, sans details (I do seem to recall the phrase "goat forker" being included):

A statement inserted in the dummy copy of a small-town newspaper in Tennessee resulted in major liability for that paper. In 1997, the Gallatin News Examiner, a tri-weekly paper, ran an article about a local high school soccer player named Garrett "Bubba" Dixon, Jr. In an early draft of the article the reporter, Nick DeLeonibus, inserted quotes attributed to the high school soccer coach charging Dixon, in extremely explicit language that would otherwise have been unfit for publication, of bestiality and unsanitary habits. This was an ongoing joke between reporter DeLeonibus and his editor in which such quotes would be inserted into the article by the reporter to see if the editor caught on. The joke bombed. The editor missed the quotes in this edition, the quotes remained in the final product, and both the soccer player and coach sued. Despite the newspaper's arguments that the statements could not be understood as statements of fact, a Tennessee jury awarded the player, Dixon, $550,000 in compensatory and $300,000 in punitive damages against the News Examiner. The coach received $150,000 in compensatory damages from the paper.

I remember when that happened our ASE printed out the story as an example to never, never write joke copy in a story assuming someone is going to catch it.

Can you imagine the punch in the stomach the reporter must have felt the next morning? Man.

I saw that too. I don't know if I would have shown up for work. But it was very funny stuff.

 

[bigpern23]

In college, one of our reporters wrote a story about a girl who had been raped on campus and mentioned that the victim had "semen in her virginia."

A couple months ago, a former co-worker emailed me this mistake in a community brief he ran at his new shop: "The Podunk Lions Club will hold its sixth annual 5K Saturday morning. The race will begin at 10 a.m., and the Kids fork Run will start at 10:20." It was supposed to be a kids FUN run. His readers were not pleased.