Times Corrects Minor Typo In Front Page Obama Caption

The New York Times published a caption this afternoon that read a tad awkwardly. As you can see in the side-by-side screen shots below, Times editors published a headline that read, "The president stopped into a White House briefing room..." in a pointer positioned in the main section of its Web site's front page and leading to this story on The Caucus blog. The use of "stopped" in the caption seemed odd to be sure, but not necessarily wrong. However, confirmation that it was a mistake became apparent fourteen minutes later when Gray Lady editors changed "stopped" to "stepped" in the copy.

At the same time, as you probably noticed, Times editors changed the photo of President Obama used on the front page. It's not clear why: Both pictures of the POTUS are actually beautifully shot. Moreover, if you're a regular reader of the blog, you'll realize this is the second time this year the Times has had copy issues in this space of its front Web page.

Times Publishes Salinger Obit Without Striking TK Placeholder

Huge news of the death of iconic author and recluse J.D. Salinger swept across the media today, with innumerable news outlets clamoring to publish their obits ASAP after the news broke. In doing so, The New York Times made an embarrassing blunder in what was an otherwise gripping and exhaustive summation of the 91-year-old Salinger's life and times: Editors failed to remove a TK placeholder prior to publishing the obituary on its Web site.

As you can see highlighted in the screen shot above, taken from the article's second page, editors left a TK (a common abbreviation used in publishing to indicate that there is more material "to come") after the quote from Salinger's agent, for which it was apparently holding a place. As you can see below in a screen shot of the exact same graph, Times editors quickly realized the presence of the composition vestige and deleted it from the article--but not before the Proofreader saw it!

Don't forget to scroll down for today's regularly scheduled post.

Are Women Aroused By Balboa?

Female desire has long been a mystery sought to be solved by men and women alike. So notes the cover story from the January 25th, 2009 edition of The New York Times Magazine in its highlighting of the efforts made by several researchers who are making headway on the topic. It's an intriguing and much debated story that mentions a lot of weird stuff, like people watching monkey porn while being monitored by scientists. Seriously.

But wait a second. On pages 29 and 30 of the magazine, the article mentions the "long-term effects of ginkgo balboa extract on sexual dysfunction in women," as you can see in the highlighted screen shot below. Gingko Balboa extract? What's that? An involuntary "DNA" sample from Sylvester Stallone? That seems way too weird, even for a story hinging on monkey porn.


And it is. Evidently, the article was attempting to reference the ancient and celebrated herb Ginkgo biloba, which has been used to treat everything from tinnitus to dementia. But somehow the word "balboa" followed Ginkgo in the print edition. Online, Times Web editors caught and corrected the mistake, as you can see below in the highlighted screen shot taken from the second page of the story's Web version. If this is a typo, it's one of catastrophic proportions because Balboa and biloba are really not that similarly spelled. The article listed several different things researchers found to be foolproof aphrodisiacs for women, including lesbian porn and video of a nude woman exercising. Seriously. However, nothing about proficient proofreading skills getting women hot was mentioned. Tragic.


This post was originally published on February 5, 2009.

New York Times Starts New Year With Headline Blunder

With 2010 underway for fewer than twelve hours and with, apparently, the effects of the celebration of the new year still lingering, The New York Times made a huge mistake yesterday morning when editors bungled the usage of the indefinite article "a" in the main headline for a story on the front page of its Web site.

As you can see highlighted in the screen shot above on the left, "When Everyone is a Honor Student" is how the faulty headline was published. The very first entry on page three of The New York Times Manual of Style and Usage says the following:

"Use an before a word beginning with a vowel sound: onion; uncle; honor."

It's pretty funny that copy editors published that blunder given that the usage guidelines for words beginning with the aspirate H and the silent H are explicitly spelled out in the style guide's very first entry and even include the word honor. But, it was the morning after New Year's Eve and it's likely several editors and copy editors were nursing mind-crippling hangovers, so a little slack can be cut.

Fortunately, as you can see in the screen shot above on the right, somebody at The Times wasn't totally incapacitated from the previous evening's revelry and was able to catch and correct the error moments after it was published--but not before the Proofreader saw it! 

Happy New Year everyone!

Dubious Anniversary At Gray Lady and Sun-Times

Today is the 20th anniversary of a copy mistake made in the Sports section of The New York Times, which has gone undetected by Times' editors and staff these many years. In an article dated December 4, 1989 and titled "SPORTS OF THE TIMES; Aggravating Is Kind Word," there exists a small, but somewhat significant error.

The mistake appears in the first line of the article's fourth paragraph of the online version; it was probably the third paragraph in the paper back in 1989, but the Proofreader has, as of yet, been unable to obtain a hard copy of that. Ironically, the mistake occurs one line after the New York Football Giants' quarterback Phil Simms is quoted as having asked reporters, "On the mess ups? Is that what you want?"

Regardless of what whomever wanted, a mess-up is what was printed next and it is highlighted for you in the screen shots above. Notice the phrase "after Bob Golic's sack" in line one of paragraph four. Readers with proficient attention to detail skills will recognize the error. While Bob Golic has appeared in many different things, most amusing among them Saved By The Bell: The College Years, he never appeared in the N.F.L. game played at the Meadowlands between the Philadelphia Eagles and New York Giants on December 3, 1989. Several credible Internet sources confirm that at no time during his professional football career did Bob Golic occupy a roster spot on the Philadelphia Eagles. Furthermore, several sources listing the Eagles' 1989 roster also confirm that Bob Golic never played in an N.F.L. game for the Eagles that year.

So, how'd the mistake happen if Bob Golic never played for the Eagles? Most likely, it was a mix-up with his younger brother Mike Golic, who you will notice was on the Eagles' roster in 1989. Mike Golic is now an ESPN radio and T.V. personality. Interesting how professional sportswriters and editors are able to make a mistake like this, which kind of undermines the integrity of the story. Bob Golic played for the Los Angeles Raiders in 1989 and played in this game on December 3rd of that year.

The Gray Lady isn't the only newspaper celebrating the dubious anniversary today. The Times' Windy City colleagues at The Chicago Sun-Times should also be popping a little bubbly today because they made the mistake too, unearthed via HighBeam.com and highlighted below. Wait, the same obscure mistake on the same day? How'd that happen?

It's difficult to speculate so long after the fact, but one guess is, given the news cycle in those days, a writer at the Sun-Times read the story in The New York Times and then spit out a reconstituted version of events which included the error. If that is the genesis of the second mistake, it's too bad the writer didn't read another story in The Times that day, which correctly accounted for Mike Golic's play in the game.

Raise a glass for a great printed mistake that should've never been made!

This post was originally published on December 4, 2008.

Missing Spaces, Letters and Extraneous Letters; Small Mistakes

But they're mistakes, nevertheless. As the Proofreader continues cleaning off his desktop, he offers up a two-for-one Thanksgiving post. As you can see in the highlighted screen shot below, this August 18th story in The New York Times about Brett Favre, the N.F.L. quarterback notorious for his Hamlet-esque indecision about retirement, is missing two spaces in key spots and contains an extraneous N making the word "a" an inappropriate "an." This article has since been updated and the mistakes removed.


It's too bad the Times and Apple don't have some sort of extraneous letter-sharing agreement on the books, because within a few days of the above mistakes, on its Web site, Apple lacked an N where it needed one, as you can see in the highlighted screen shot below.

These are small, nit-picky mistakes, but most definitely mistakes that you wouldn't expect from these two industry leaders.

The Proofreader would like to wish everyone a happy Thanksgiving, especially all of the professionals who continue making printed mistakes that shouldn't be made.

Errors Aplenty In Times Baseball Column

Summer. The weather heats up (or warms up, this year), the days are longer, the overall pace of life slows down a little and people take all kinds of measures to maximize their enjoyment of the season. Often, those measures involve a vacation of one type or another. For many, the vacations are all mental. Good, old-fashioned escapism. Perhaps this explains the recent lapses over at The New York Times, because it seems like whatever Times employees have been editing and proofreading the Op-Extra "Heading Home" column have been on a protracted mental vacation. Come on, Times H.R. department--give these people a real vacation so they can refresh, recharge and return to form! The mistakes lately have been silly and elementary.

The first one, an instance of bad HTML, happened in a column published nearly a month ago titled "Fehr's Game." Interestingly, this isn't the first time "Heading Home" has been plagued by bad HTML. As you can see above, in the second-to-last paragraph of the column's first page, the word "all" appeared printed with HTML tags intended to make the word appear italicized. This one was corrected rather quickly, but was unable to elude the Proofreader.


Next, as you can see above, yesterday's installment of the column contained a spelling error that was probably caused by a typo. The writer was looking for the word "choose," but ended up typing the past tense "chose," which turned out to also be the wrong tense.

These mistakes are a shame, because they mar what is an otherwise great column that gives readers a unique perspective of a real MLB player's view of baseball and the world. There's no excuse for these silly blunders that only distract from the fine content. Hopefully, a vacation is in order for the editors and proofreaders in question. Everyone needs vacations, even proofreaders. Check that. Especially proofreaders!

Extraneous Word In Times Article About Leno

Well, Leno's officially gone from late night TV, but not to worry. The McDonald's of comedians will be back in a few months with a new, prime-time show. Yesterday, The New York Times ran an interesting story on its Web site analyzing what Leno's move to five-nights-a-week in prime-time might mean for the medium of television...besides more watered-down, hacky jokes and boring interviews. And, in the article, the Times left an extra word, perhaps from a previous draft, in a sentence.

The extra word occurs in the last line of the story's fifth paragraph, as you can see in the highlighted screen shot above. It seems like this sentence may have been re-worked during editing and a vestige of the old phrasing didn't get deleted. The sentence reads, "...then NBC will be left scrambling to find fill five prime-time hours a week." That "find" preceding "fill" doesn't make any sense.

Perhaps they should've simply omitted "find" or added an "er" to "fill" and followed it with the word "for," so the sentence would've read, "to find filler for five prime-time hours a week." That would've been less efficient, but at least it would have made sense.

As of now, this mistake has not been corrected on the Web site. Plus, this isn't the first time the Times has made an error in its Leno coverage. The Proofreader caught a factual inaccuracy in an article last December, which was distributed to many other news services.

Was Geronimo Tougher Than Pneumonia?

Iconic Apache warrior Geronimo is famed for his unparalleled toughness on the battlefield, but was he so tough that it took pneumonia over two decades to kill him? An unclear passage from a February 19th article in The New York Times, titled "Geronimo's Heirs Sue Secret Yale Society Over His Skull," seems to suggest that Geronimo, who died in 1909, lived his last 23 years dying of pneumonia while imprisoned.
As you can see in the above screen shot, highlighted for your viewing convenience, the last sentence of the article's eleventh paragraph reads, "He finally surrendered, with only 35 men left, to Gen. Nelson A. Miles on the New Mexico-Arizona border in 1886 and spent the rest of his life in prison, dying of pneumonia." The article and the passage were brought to the attention of the Proofreader by reader Don Martin, who, in an e-mail message, took issue with the vague phrasing of the sentence. Wait, is it even possible for a human to have pneumonia for over 20 years before succumbing?

Yes, in theory. But it's not likely and it has nothing to do with how tough a person is. Geronimo could have been afflicted with some rare, lingering form of pneumonia, bronchitis or other respiratory condition such as bronchiectasis, the symptoms of which can develop very gradually. Or he could have suffered from hypersensitivity pneumonitis, a lung disease that's been known to wax and wane in patients for years.

It's even possible Geronimo suffered from tuberculosis, to which Native Americans are particularly vulnerable, or M kansasii, a chronic pulmonary infection that resembles TB and about which almost nothing was known in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. All of these conditions could have easily been mistaken for pneumonia by a doctor determining the cause of Geronimo's death for his death certificate, especially if an autopsy wasn't performed on his corpse. Due to the prevalence of respiratory infections at the time, pneumonia was commonly cited on death certificates, much like "heart attack" is a common cause of death cited on death certificates these days.

Regardless of whether or not Geronimo died a long, slow death from pneumonia or another respiratory condition, the copy in the Times story could have been less vague or even broken into two, more clear sentences. As Times deputy news editor Philip B. Corbett astutely noted in a recent blog post, "periods don't add to the word count."

The Proofreader thanks Sidney K. Stein, M.D. and reader Don Martin for sending in the vague copy.

HTML SNAFU In Times Op-Extra Column

Today's Op-Extra column on the Web site of The New York Times, an enlightening piece titled "Bling Training," was temporarily handcuffed by an HTML SNAFU. As you can see in the highlighted screen shot below, the contraction "that's," in the article's eighth paragraph, was surrounded by an HTML tag used to make the word appear italicized to readers. The blunder was quickly corrected, even without the Proofreader notifying Times editors of the mistake.

The "Heading Home" Op-Extra column is written by former MLB player Doug Glanville and is always insightful and sometimes even poignant. Glanville is adept at taking readers inside the mind of a real MLB player, no small achievement. Unfortunately, the column is not always error-free, which subtly undermines its greatness. It's a shame it's not typically better copy-edited before being published.

Disappointing Spelling Mistake in Times Op-Ed

Vol.CLVIII...No. 54,592 or the February 20, 2009 edition of The New York Times contains a spelling error in an Op-Ed column by recently-retired N.F.L. head coach Tony Dungy. The mistake was published in both the online version of the article and the printed version in the newspaper.

In the second line of the second paragraph of an article titled "Diversity Everywhere but the Sidelines," the word disappointing is misspelled "disapointing," lacking one of the two Ps in the word, as you can see in the below screen shot.

Also, if you have the print edition of the paper, turn to page A31 and you can see the mistake in the article which appears at the bottom of the page. Or direct your attention to the highlighted picture below.

The New York Times Op-Ed page is consistently a veritable marketplace of interesting and usually well-expressed ideas, which is why it's disappointing when these types of minor errors sneak by editors. And, while Tony Dungy was a great N.F.L. coach during his career, he has much room for improvement as an Op-Ed writer, the spelling mistake notwithstanding, because that was the fault of several people. Perhaps he shouldn't have quit his day job. Typically, the Times publishes better-written, better-thought-out Op-Ed columns. This one was subpar on two levels.

Are Women Aroused By Balboa?

Female desire has long been a mystery sought to be solved by men and women alike. So notes the cover story from the January 25th, 2009 edition of The New York Times Magazine in its highlighting of the efforts made by several researchers who are making headway on the topic. It's an intriguing and much debated story that mentions a lot of weird stuff, like people watching monkey porn while being monitored by scientists. Seriously.

But wait a second. On pages 29 and 30 of the magazine, the article mentions the "long-term effects of ginkgo balboa extract on sexual dysfunction in women," as you can see in the highlighted screen shot below. Gingko Balboa extract? What is that? An involuntary "DNA" sample from Sylvester Stallone? That seems way too weird, even for a story hinging on monkey porn.


And it is. Evidently, the article was attempting to reference the ancient and celebrated herb Ginkgo biloba, which has been used to treat everything from tinnitus to dementia. But somehow the word "balboa" followed Ginkgo in the print edition. Online, Times Web editors caught and corrected the mistake, as you can see below in the highlighted screen shot taken from the second page of the story's Web version. If this is a typo, it's one of catastrophic proportions because Balboa and biloba are really not that similarly spelled. The article listed several different things researchers found to be foolproof aphrodisiacs for women, including lesbian porn and video of a nude woman exercising. Seriously. However, nothing about proficient proofreading skills getting women hot was mentioned. Tragic.

Reader-Submitted Headline Mistake on N.Y. Times Web Site

"We have been publishing The Times since 1851 and there has never been an edition that did not have typos or errors of fact in it," conceded a senior editor from The New York Times Public Editor's office in an e-mail message. "And there never will be," the editor predicted, when asked about a major misspelling that appeared in the headline of a December 8th, 2008 article on the Gray Lady's Web site. This mistake was caught by the discerning eye of READER BEN, who kindly brought it to the Proofreader's attention.


As you can see in the highlighted screen shot above, The Times neglected to spell Illinois with the requisite two Ls in this article, that's since been changed. In many font types, the capital I and the lower-case L look exactly the same, so it's possible the similarity of the two letters tricked editors into thinking they saw the correct spelling. But, Illinois is a pretty well-known state and it has a silent S at the end. Forgetting the S at the end of Illinois seems like the more likely and explainable error. Either way, this misspelling occurred in a headline, in big, bold print. How exactly does an obvious mistake like this get published? Are these kinds of errors due to over-worked editors or just the breakneck pace of reporting online?

"Many of those errors certainly can be attributed to the crush of deadlines," wrote the senior editor. "And that is certainly true now for reporters and editors on the Web. Their deadlines are 100 times tougher than any print deadline. "

Wait, what about spell-check? Sometimes, in the dash to break news on the Internet, Times editors don't have time to use spell-check and other proofreading methods. And, when they do deploy such devices, spell-checking software occasionally registers a word as spelled correctly, unaware of the context in which it's being used. Ultimately, though, the senior editor points to simple human imperfection.

"The reason these mistakes occur is quite simple: The Times is staffed by human beings and we make mistakes."

The Proofreader thanks Reader Ben, writer of the The Baseball Card Blog, for pointing out the mistake.

Ever find a printed mistake that shouldn't have been made? E-mail a screen shot of it to jalfredproofreader@gmail.com.

Law of Averages "Times" Two

VOL. CLVIII..No. 54,538 (or the December 28, 2008 edition) of The New York Times contains at least two mistakes, both small typos, buried amongst its copious pages. One can be found in the Sunday Business section and another in the accompanying issue of The New York Times Magazine. As of this posting, both mistakes are available online and both were printed in the hard copies of the newspaper and magazine.



On page six of the Business section, in the continuation of a feature titled "Satellite Radio Still Reaches for the Payday," a typo exists in the 21st paragraph, first line, second word. On the Web site, you can find it on the story's second page, in the eleventh paragraph. It's highlighted in both the picture from the newspaper and the screen shot from the Web site below.


The copy reads, "So if would be unfair to compare us to a newspaper business..." Now, this is a tricky one because, at a glance, it seems obvious the text was meant to read, "So it would be unfair..."

It rather than if.

But the apparent typo exists inside of quotation marks; the sentence was a quote attributed to Sirius Chief Executive Mel Karmazin. So, did Mr. Karmazin misspeak or did The Times misprint?

The Times misprinted. According to an e-mail message from a senior editor in The Times' Public Editor's office, "It was indeed a typo. The word should have been 'it.'" So, how'd the typo evade copy editors? The senior editor explains, "Given that we publish more than one million staff-written words a week, these typos are certain to get through." In other words, it's the law of averages.

The law of averages struck again on page 33 of "The Lives They Lived" issue of The Times Magazine. The article is a memorial for Tim Russert, the late moderator of Meet The Press. If you adjust your view to the third line of the first paragraph in the second column on page 33 and the third line of the eighth paragraph online, you'll notice the sentence lacks the preposition "of."


As you can see in the picture above and the screen shot below, the copy reads, "...admonition to hotel guests not to sleep on the side the bed where the telephone..." Clearly, the word "of" should have appeared between "side" and "the" in that sentence. Again, another small mistake, but a mistake nonetheless.

Four For One Sloppy Copy In Blagojevich Coverage

There's no question the surname of Illinois' governor is neither easy to pronounce nor easy to spell and The New York Times bungled the spelling today on its Web site, two days after The Connecticut Post made the same mistake and almost a week after The Los Angeles Times did. On the other hand, the title of his office, "governor," shouldn't present a pronunciation or spelling challenge to journalists. Yet it has, at a T.V. news station in Chicago.

On the Web site of CBS2 in Chicago, news writers managed to misspell "governor." In the second line of the article's first paragraph, just under a deck where it's spelled correctly, the word is spelled "govenror," as you can see in the screen shot below. The error appears to be a typo probably made by one of three individuals at CBS2 or someone at the Associated Press, all of whom are credited with contributing to the report. But CBS2 copy editors should've have caught the blunder.


Over at The Times, writers messed up the governor's funny-sounding last name, spelling it "Blogojevich" in the fourth line of this article's second paragraph, after having spelled it correctly twice, once in the headline and once in the opening line of the story and then many times afterward and in other articles. The mistake, also likely a typo, is highlighted in the screen shot below for your viewing convenience.


The Times isn't the only newspaper to misspell the beleaguered governor's name. Yep, the Connecticut Post also spelled it "Blogojevich" on its Web site in the headline of an article dated December 17, 2008 before spelling it correctly several times in the body of the article.


Haven't had your fill? On the west coast, The L.A. Times made the error in a December 13th article on its Web site. As you can see, in the highlighted screen shot below, The L.A. Times bungled the spelling once in the headline and twice in the deck, before getting it right several times in the body of the article.


How the hell do these mistakes happen? One reason is that, at The L.A. Times, copy editors (who are supposed to catch the mistakes, not make them) write the headlines, which accounts for the various spellings in the headline, deck and body. A similar process is probably employed at most newspapers and their Web sites. What's unexplainable and inexcusable is that the mistakes on the Connecticut Post and L.A. Times Web sites remain uncorrected days after publication.

For the other two blunders, the Internet is partly to blame, because news outlets are racing to beat each other in breaking news online. But basic proofreading shouldn't be compromised for breaking news. These are all mistakes that never should've happened.

Missing Preposition In Times Op-Ed

Amid coverage of the stunning corruption allegations against Illinois Governor and jackass Rod Blagojevich, The New York Times erred in a December 10th Op-Ed column titled "State of Shame." The column mainly details the onerous legal position U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald was thrust into by Blagojevich's brazen greed. It's an insightful and enlightening piece.

Alas, the Proofreader regrets to report, the otherwise flawless column contains a copy mistake (probably a typo) in the last line of the fifth paragraph, highlighted - as usual - in the screen shot above. Kindly direct your attention to the phrase "Mr. Libby’s perjury and obstruction justice trial" in paragraph five's last line.

The phrase, which references I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby's 2007 trial, appears to be missing the preposition "of." Yeah, it's only a two-letter word and it's not a typo Microsoft Word would catch and it doesn't undermine any facts or anything, but the preposition's absence muddles the phrase.

Since the column was written by an attorney, it's possible "obstruction justice trial" could be jargon or slang used by lawyers, but not likely. None of the lawyers the Proofreader has consulted have ever heard of such lingo. Also, in the interest of "readability," Times editors are usually adept at helping Op-Ed contributors avoid the use of gratuitous slang or jargon. Furthermore, a Google search of the phrase yields virtually no results (other than the column in question), meaning it's almost certainly an error. That it was missed by multiple professionals makes it a mistake that shouldn't have happened.

Worse still, the mistake made it into the printed edition of the December 10, 2008 New York Times newspaper. In case you didn't pick up a copy of the paper for yourself, a picture of the published mistake appears below in the second-to-last line of the fifth paragraph. You can click here or on the picture to view it enlarged and here to see it without highlighting.

Copy Mistake In Times Caucus Blog

Fully in accordance with the slogan here, "Pointing out all manner of printed mistakes that shouldn't have been made," this post brings a copy mistake on The New York Times "The Caucus" blog to your attention. The Proofreader is by no means picking on The Times. Honest.

The error, highlighted in the screen shot below for your convenience, occurs in a post dated December 12, 2008, titled "Sorry, We're Booked, White House Tells Obamas." Kindly scan down to the only line of the third paragraph. It reads, "It remained unclear who on Bushes guest list outranked the incoming President."


"Bushes," plural, should be "Bush's," singular possessive. Or, if "Bushes" is referring to the entire Bush family, then the article "the" should precede it and the proper, plural noun should be made possessive so it reads "Bushes'" or "Bushes's." Yeah, that surname is extremely annoying for writers.

In addition, the last word of the sentence, "President," should probably not be capitalized. According to The New York Times Manual of Style and Usage, "President-Elect" should be capitalized, as it is earlier in the blog entry. But "president" should only be capitalized if it's immediately followed by a name or "in a first reference to the president of the United States." This is a weird one, because President-elect Obama was referenced several times earlier in the article, but that instance is the first to reference him as "incoming President." It's something of a gray area which could've been avoided by simply referring to Mr. Obama as "the President-elect" rather than "incoming President" because, technically, he's not the president.


As you can see in the above screen shot, the post was made at 1:11 p.m. and then updated, but not corrected, at 3:12 p.m. As of this writing, the mistake still appears on "The Caucus" blog. However, a similar article appearing in The Times' December 13 edition and online is free of the errors.

Huffington, Times Tag-Team Mistake

2010 splits the defenders

News outlets love to break news so much that sometimes they bungle the story a little (and sometimes a lot). In the scramble to be the town crier on a big T.V. news story involving Jay Leno staying on at NBC in prime time after he leaves the Tonight show, at least two major news organizations made a small but critical mistake.

Shockingly, on its Web site, The New York Times printed a glaring (to sharp-eyed readers) error in its coverage of the Leno story. As you can see in the screen shot highlighted above, The Times’ article states, “Five years ago NBC announced that it would give the job of host of that franchise late-night show to Conan O'Brien in May 2010.”

Any follower of this story knows that Mr. O’Brien is taking over the Tonight show from the large-jawed host in May 2009 (not 2010) and so does The Times, because the paper has been closely following the story for around five years and the article’s writer basically wrote the book on late night television (a truly amazing story and good read). Therefore, it’s no surprise The Times quickly recognized and corrected the error, albeit without admitting to the gaffe.

But, lesser news organizations, most notably The Huffington Post, have made the mistake and, as of this writing, have yet to make the correction. It’s one thing for The Times to publish a typo or briefly get the years in question mixed up while breaking the story, but it’s quite another blunder for Huffington Post editors to reprint the story and not catch the error. And, The Huffington Post didn’t clearly credit the story to The Times. Huh, really?

Yep, look closely at the above screen shot. Huffington Post editors gave their own writer credit for the story and the mistake while vaguely noting that The Times "also reports the move," even though the majority of the text is copied verbatim from The Times. The Proofreader can’t help but wonder if Huffington Post editors read the story or just performed some slapdash copying and pasting to get the story online as quickly as possible. As is often the case, other media outlets have repeated the mistake, but many, if not most, have not. Hopefully, those that did will correct the mistake and notify readers of the original error.

Dubious Anniversary At Gray Lady and Sun-Times

Mistake that's old enough to vote

Today is the 19th anniversary of a copy mistake made in the Sports section of The New York Times, which has gone undetected by Times' editors and staff these many years. In an article dated December 4, 1989 and titled "SPORTS OF THE TIMES; Aggravating Is Kind Word," there exists a small, but somewhat significant error.

The mistake appears in the first line of the article's fourth paragraph of the online version; it was probably the third paragraph in the paper back in 1989, but the Proofreader has, as of yet, been unable to obtain a hard copy of that. Ironically, the mistake occurs one line after the New York Football Giants' quarterback Phil Simms is quoted as having asked reporters, "On the mess ups? Is that what you want?"

Regardless of what whomever wanted, a mess-up is what was printed next and it is highlighted for you in the screen shots above. Notice the phrase "after Bob Golic's sack" in line one of paragraph four. Readers with proficient attention to detail skills will recognize the error. While Bob Golic has appeared in many different things, most amusing among them Saved By The Bell: The College Years, he never appeared in the N.F.L. game played at the Meadowlands between the Philadelphia Eagles and New York Giants on December 3, 1989. Several credible Internet sources confirm that at no time during his professional football career did Bob Golic occupy a roster spot on the Philadelphia Eagles. Furthermore, several sources listing the Eagles' 1989 roster also confirm that Bob Golic never played in an N.F.L. game for the Eagles that year.

So, how'd the mistake happen if Bob Golic never played for the Eagles? Most likely, it was a mix-up with his younger brother Mike Golic, who you will notice was on the Eagles' roster in 1989. Mike Golic is now an ESPN radio and T.V. personality. Interesting how professional sportswriters and editors are able to make a mistake like this, which kind of undermines the integrity of the story. Bob Golic played for the Los Angeles Raiders in 1989 and played in this game on December 3rd of that year.

The Gray Lady isn't the only newspaper celebrating the dubious anniversary today. The Times' Windy City colleagues at The Chicago Sun-Times should also be popping a little bubbly today because they made the mistake too, unearthed via HighBeam.com and highlighted below. Wait, the same obscure mistake on the same day? How'd that happen?

It's difficult to speculate so long after the fact, but one guess is, given the news cycle in those days, a writer at the Sun-Times read the story in The New York Times and then spit out a reconstituted version of events which included the error. If that is the genesis of the second mistake, it's too bad the writer didn't read another story in The Times that day, which correctly accounted for Mike Golic's play in the game.

Stay tuned. The Proofreader is going to investigate the matter further and also will petition the two publications to correct the mistakes after all these years. Should be interesting to see how they respond. Till then, raise a glass for a great printed mistake that should've never been made! Below is another screenshot of the page as it appears as of today, it's anniversary.

How does Tenafly, New Jersey figure in to the whole thing? Wait for it...

Developing Mistakes In Developing Story

Haste makes mistakes

A follow-up mistake to an earlier story containing a copy mistake on The New York Times Web site is pictured above. Notice in the first line of the article the phrase "arrived a downtown," highlighted for your convenience, of course. The phrase should probably read "arrived at a downtown..."

The mistake, an obvious product of the difficult task of breaking news in the Internet age, was quickly corrected by Times staff, but still didn't manage to elude the Proofreader.