Yesterday, I showed you an error in the New York Times. Like I said then, I don’t normally show most newspaper errors that come my way. There are just too many of them.
But here was the front page of Monday’s Washington Post:
See that tax cuts story at the upper left? Here’s a closer view of the top of that story:
What an embarrassing error for the Post to make on Page One. Doh!
Thanks to Ryan Smith of the New Orleans Times-Picayune for tweeting this last night.
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UPDATE:
Phillip Blanchard of Testy Copy Editors adds, in the comments of this post:
That’s unfortunate, but far worse was the lede headline on the sports front:
And Phillip has a point. Sure, losing to James Madison darkens what should have been a joyous sports Saturday at Virginia Tech. But Virginia Tech, of course. has seen much, much darker days.
As Phillip writes at Testy Copy Editors:
No. No “dark day in Blacksburg” on a sports story. Think, please.
That’s unfortunate, but far worse was the lede headline on the sports front: http://goo.gl/1VDF
On Sunday, of course.
Wait — we’re spotlighting typos in text now? That one’s bad, but it’s still a typo.
The “dark day” headline isn’t really a problem, either. It’s in the context of sports. Could something better have been written? Of course.
But typos and mistakes that aren’t really mistakes are far less damaging than the shifting of attitudes that erodes quality on a daily basis.
You bring up a great point, Robert. I do NOT want to get into displaying every little typo.
I found this one worthy of note, though, because:
a) It was a misspelling of the name of our most recent ex-president.
b) It was by the Washington Post, of all papers. And…
c) It was on page one.
A careful spellcheck would have caught that. But other than that, I doubt either of the writers or the desk person will lose much sleep over this one.
And I would take a Geroge in body type over the lazy “Pirates hope to win game” sports refers or the “It’s time to turn on the heaters” standing heds that appear too frequently. If the people doing the pages don’t care enough about the stories to find out what they are about and to make that point, why should the readers?