Greetings Fellow Editors,
We all make mistakes. I couldn't begin to tell you how many
flubs have crept into this little whistle over the years. It's a
good thing this is done on the computer, or I'd be forced to
order correction fluid in the convenient 55-gallon drum size.
Mistakes happen in this thing all of the time, despite my best
efforts at fact and grammar checking. Yes, I know you can also
find such nagging faults in operations that don't write their
stories in an hour or two of time very late on a Saturday night
like, say, the New York Times. But that is small comfort when
you know you're the one who screwed up.
It occurs to me that this has one major failing: once it is
launched on its way, there is no way to call it back, just like
newspapers, broadcasting and ICBMs. The only thing to do in such
cases is to run a correction. Fortunately, this is easier for
news operations than it is in the case of ICBMs. Correction
always becomes necessary after one of the four major causes of
errors: omission, inaccuracy, oversight or Arthur Anderson
Accounting.
I recently received a correction to an article I did some
months ago from a nice fellow named Jon Beamson, who had appeared
in a fire service story from SUNFUN #279, PLAYING WITH FIRE from
back on December 16, 2001. Already there's an error, for the
source that I quoted called him "John" rather than Jon. Those of
you who follow these pages may recall that the story involved
Chief Beamson being fooled by some rather nasty members of his
fire company into thinking that the Fire Brigade command had sent
him a device to turn red traffic lights green so the fire engine
could pass more easily.
Of course, the device was a fake and he was being put on,
but the chief has now explained to me that there was more to it
than that; the story that had come down through my sources was
somewhat simplified for comic effect. Beamson pointed out that
others were also taken in and that it was quite common for their
company to be assigned to test new gear for the fire service. A
little unsavory was that one of the wankers on the company tipped
the press, rather than just having his laugh at the chief's
expense privately, so Jon Beamson first heard he was being led on
in the British national media. You have to figure that Chief
Beamson has a pretty good sense of humor in that the offender
wasn't permanently assigned to polishing the bottom side of all
the company's trucks.
As always, there is no way we could ever get SUNFUN put
together each week without the help and encouragement of all the
SUNFUN gang, with special thanks this week to: Ellen M. Peterson
(whose birthday card should show up any day now), Caterina Sukup,
Jerry Taff, Nnamdi Elleh, Carol J. Becwar, Susan Will, Tim
McChain, Jan Michalski, Bernie & Donna Becwar, Yasmin Leischer
and Joshua D Brink. While I hate it when things go off track
here at SUNFUN, there are worse things that could happen. I, for
one, would have hated to be the book editor who approved the book
"Easy Sky Diving," which reportedly contained an error on Page 8,
line 7, where the words "state zip code" should actually have
read "pull rip cord."
Have A Grate Weak,
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"The road to wisdom?
Well, it's plain & simple to express,
Err and err and err again,
but less and less and less."
- Danish poet and scientist Piet Hein
(1905-1996), in one of the poems
that he called his "Grooks"
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"Errors made universally by everyone are correct"
- Arabic proverb
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HEADLINES THE EDITOR MISSED
---------------------------
All of these headlines have two - or even more - readings...
- Man Accused of Shooting Neighbor, Dog Held for Trial.
- Yellow Perch Decline to be Studied
- Murder Suspect Gets Appointed Attorney
- Jacksonville Pornography Free, Officials Say
- Manufacturer Discharged into River
- Frozen Embryos Ruled Children
- Infant Abducted from Hospital Safe
- TV Networks Agree to Police Violence
- Large Church Plans Collapse
- French Offer Terrorist Reward
- N.J. Jails for Women in Need of a Facelift
- Crowds Rushing to See Pope Trample 6 to Death
- Late Bus Coordinator Remembered
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WAY UP IN THE ERROR DEPARTMENT
------------------------------
- Back in the days before computers, The Bloomington
(Illinois) Pantagraph typeset their Birth Announcements as
they came in, sending them down to the printers as they were
updated. Unfortunately, one of them was printed leaving in
the instructions to the printer to remove the previous copy
before using the current list. You can imagine the concern
of many new parents when they saw the line at the top of the
announcements read: "KILL ALL PREVIOUS BABIES."
- The Detroit News in the early 1980s ran a front page local
story and large photo showing "a rare pair of Siamese frogs"
next to a suburban family's backyard pond. That was before
the call they got from a biology professor, who belatedly
alerted editors to the fact that the photo actually showed
two not-so-rare mating frogs.
- From a local paper in Illinois: "The sermon at the
Presbyterian Church this coming Sunday will be 'There Are No
Sects in Heaven.' The subject was incorrectly printed in
yesterday's edition as 'There is No Sex in Heaven.'"
- From a California bar association's newsletter: "Correction
-- the following typo appeared in our last bulletin: 'Lunch
will be gin at 12:15 p.m.' Please correct to read '12
noon.'"
- Style Weekly, an alternative weekly in Richmond, Virginia
ran an advertorial with menu listings from various local
restaurants. One listing - for one of the finest
restaurants in town - included the highly unusual dish:
"Roast Loin of Rabbi."
- A Reno (Nevada) Gazette-Journal sportswriter in the early
1990s, wrote a preview of the Nevada girls' high school
basketball playoffs that featured the last year's winners,
the Reno Huskies, and their confidence in a repeat. The
next day's headline: "Husky Girls Like It On Top."
- "It was incorrectly reported last Friday that today is T-
shirt Appreciation Day. In fact, it is actually Teacher
Appreciation Day."
- This correction ran in the Newport News (Virginia) Daily
Press: "An article in Saturday's Local section incorrectly
reported that a suspect identified as 'Fnu Lnu' had been
indicted by a federal grand jury. 'Fnu Lnu' is not a name.
FNU is a law enforcement abbreviation for 'first name
unknown,' LNU for 'last name unknown.' Officials knew the
suspect only by the name 'Dezo.'"
- "We apologize to our readers who received, through an
unfortunate computer error, the chest measurements of
members of the Female Wrestlers Association instead of the
figures on the sales of soybeans to foreign countries."
- "Our article about Jewish burial customs contained an error:
Mourners' clothing is rent -- that is, torn -- not rented."
- In the March, 2001 Wisconsin Sportsman Magazine article on
various local fishing hot spots was the paragraph ending:
"... Well-fed pike are more difficult to catch simply
because they're not hungry. However, the pike anglers who
do catch fish are usually big, healthy northerns."
- "A Boston-area weekend newscast some years ago chose to end
the broadcast with a typical 'ain't life wacky?' news item
using footage from a service, in this case a beachside 'Miss
Nude America' competition. The station engineers,
naturally, obscured the naughty bits of the winner as she
strolled proudly up and down the runway... But they
neglected to do anything about the hundreds of nudists in
the audience behind her. The speechless expression of the
TV anchorman afterward was priceless"
- In the City Beat section of Friday's paper, firefighter
Dwight Brady was misidentified. His nickname in the
department is "Dewey." Another firefighter is nicknamed
"Weirdo." We apologize for our mistake.
- "Yesterday we mistakenly reported that a talk was given by a
battle-scared hero. We apologize for the error. We
obviously meant that the talk was given by a bottle-scarred
hero."
- "Apology: I originally wrote, 'Woodrow Wilson's wife grazed
sheep on front lawn of the White House.' I'm sorry that
typesetting inadvertently left out the word 'sheep.'"
- "In one edition of today's Food Section, an inaccurate
number of jalapeno peppers was given for Jeanette Crowley's
Southwestern chicken salad recipe. The recipe should call
for two, not 21, jalapeno peppers."
- "The marriage of Miss Freda van Amburg and Willie Branton,
which was announced in this paper a few weeks ago, was a
mistake which we wish to correct."
- The L.A. Times' religion page had this headline that would
be front-page news if true: "Disciples of Christ Choose New
Leader."
- Number of words devoted to the Great Depression in Houghton-
Mifflin's fifth-grade history book, "Build Our Nation": 332.
Number devoted to the baseball career of Cal Ripken Jr.:
339.
- "Just to keep the record straight, it was the famous
Whistler's Mother, not Hitler's, that was exhibited. There
is nothing to be gained in trying to explain how this error
occurred."
- Poorly though out headline in a Syracuse, New York paper one
morning: "Firefighters Help Burn Victims."
- Odd correction from a Kellogg's Crispix cereal box with Jay
Leno's smug mug all over the back and three "Jay's Jokes" on
the side panel: "No Celebrity Endorsement Implied."
- One of the funniest newspaper correction writers is Readers'
Editor Ian Mayes of the Manchester Guardian in England: "In
our magazine, The Editor, page 3, February 11, we referred
to the Six nations rugby tournament in which we said 'Wales
thrashed France' - a possibly partisan way of interpreting
the actual result: Wales 3, France 36."
-----
"A caption in Guardian Weekend, page 102, 13 November, read,
'Binch of crappy travel mags.' That should, of course, have
been 'bunch.' But more to the point it should not have been
there at all. It was a dummy [placeholder] which we failed
to replace with the real caption. It was not meant to be a
comment on perfectly good travel brochures. Apologies."
-----
"We spelt Morecambe, the town in Lancashire, wrong on Page
2, G2, yesterday. We often do."
- A few years ago, the Pacific Stars and Stripes, the daily
newspaper for the American military community in the
Pacific, had a lengthy feature on famed community activist
and Catholic Worker stalwart Dorothy Day. On the magazine
cover promoting the inside story was a full page picture of,
you guessed it, actress Doris Day." [What a difference a
Day made?]
- In June 1997's DM Review, there was a box at the end of a
monthly column: "Correction: In the April column, 'yummy'
should have been 'yymmdd'." (As in YYear/MMonth/DDay.)
- Rebecca Coates Nee: "When I was an anchor/producer at KHSL-
TV in Chico, California in 1987, I opened one newscast
talking about a new program for high school dropouts.
Unfortunately, the tape editor rolled a tape of the
Iran/Contra Congressional hearings as I spoke the words ...
'There's new hope for these high school dropouts.' The
viewers saw Congressmen instead of high school dropouts.
Some people thought the mistake was rather appropriate."
- The Steubenville Herald once sponsored a contest, in
conjunction with a local Dodge dealership, to give away a
new Dodge Neon to some lucky reader. The giveaway was held
on a Saturday morning, and a photographer was assigned to
cover the ceremony. He took a few shots, got the caption
information and entered it into the computer system back at
the office. Apparently nobody bothered to read the caption,
so the entire circulation saw the front-page four-color
photo of the winner with his rather cynical "Cheapass Dodge
Neon Awarded" Needless to say, there were some openings at
that paper Monday morning."
- Joie Chen (now a CNN anchor) used to be a reporter for WXIA
in Atlanta. She covered a local story in the mid-90's, when
the jailhouse-style of wearing pants without a belt was
popular in Atlanta. In the background of the story shot at
Piedmont Park was a fashionably clad young man sitting some
bleachers, with his back to the camera. Of course the vast
majority of the young man's derriere was visible above his
drooping trousers. So Ms. Chen's opening line took on a new
and unexpected meaning: "There is a serious crack problem in
this neighborhood.... no ifs, ands or butts."
- The Northwest Herald, based in Crystal Lake, Illinois, once
printed a complete business section with a story on Chrysler
with the headline "Chrysler Story Goes Here."
- Some years ago, The Miami Herald appointed a new publisher
named Richard Capen. The Herald's sister Spanish-language
paper, then known as El Herald, headlined that story as:
'Capen el editor' (which translates to 'Capen named editor,'
there being no word for publisher in Spanish). Only one
thing wrong: in Spanish, that headline could also be read
'Castrate the publisher.'
- WTMJ in Milwaukee once sent a reporter to cover a plane
mishap at Chicago's O'Hare Field. The reporter did a
reasonably good job on what turned out to be one of those
'it could have been a lot worse' stories. After chatting
live and on-camera with the airport manager, the reporter
then addressed the co-anchors back at the station. "You
know, Mike and Carol, I think it is important for us to
remind the viewers that air travel is still the safest way
to fly."
- "The Rev. Muhamed Siddeequ, spiritual advisor to Mike Tyson,
told the New Jersey State Athletic Commission in July [2001]
that the fighter is of such great character that not only
should he get back his boxing license but is a candidate to
succeed Kofi Annan as U.N. secretary general." [Watch your
ears, Kofi...]
- On Election Night in 1988, the Savannah Morning News
prepared an index box of inside articles. The artist, in a
whimsical mood, prepared a dummy box as a place holder until
the real index was ready. Sure enough, the final edition
went to press with the dummy index with such stories as:
Page 3: Dukakis Names Cabinet Despite Having Lost
Page 4: Bush Checks Into White House, Orders New
Drapes, Call Domino's
Page 6: Dukakis Plucks Eyebrows, Fixes Nose, Plans to
Become a Monk
Page 8: Who Put the Brang in the Branga Danga Ding
Dang, Who Was That Man, I'd Like to Shake His Hand, He
Made My Baby Fall in Love With Me
Page 9: Quayle Drools at the Thought of Being
President, Bush Says "Over My Dead Body"
When the blooper was finally caught, distribution
employees were sent out at 5 a.m. to retrieve already
delivered copies of the paper from people's front lawns.
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© 2002 by Bill Becwar. All Rights Reserved.
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