An amazing story about how much one mistake can do

http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story/ual-shares-plunge-recycled-bankruptcy/story.aspx?guid=%7BE598174B%2D7E4F%2D41B4%2DBB2B%2D22248840E18E%7D&siteid=yhoof

Sun-Sentinel.com posted story United Airlines was filing for bankruptcy.

It was six years old.

Shares plunged to a penny.

Company's mad; shareholders mad. A lot of people.

One person making one mistake.

An over-the-top reminder that we need to "sweat the small stuff," even today.

 

I'm guessing someone is getting fired over this one.

That is crazy.

 

I wonder if someone hacked their site and posted the story.

 

It's been explained to me by somebody who would know -- not at the S-S, but somebody who knows how the system runs -- and it sounds like an accidental posting of the story is entirely plausible.

Of course, on message threads, the conspiracy theorists are already chirping.

I know trading was halted, but how cool would it be if you got it almost at the bottom before it started back.

 

An accidental posting IS entirely plausible.

In newspapers' belated "rush to the WEB" they ended up with shaky tech systems that are held together with nothing more than electronic toothpicks. Editors and developers have been jury-rigging these systems for years while management refuses to upgrade internal or external technology.

Before we start harping on how someone should lose a job over this, realize that it could very easily happen at your shop, on a story you wrote years ago.

 

Those people would be the first investigated.

And someone will do very well for himself writing some new software to prevent stuff like this from happening.

 

Yeah. Like newspapers are gonna buy it.

 

A shop I know recently ran a classified page -- including a couple of obits -- that were two years old to the day. I'm sure those cats that were "free to a good home" are gone by now...

 

This stuff happens all the time, just not on stuff as significant as this.

I clicked on one paper's website over the weekend looking for a game story and what came up was a gamer more than five years old, by a beat writer who has been gone for a few years.

Also a Tribune Co. paper. I'm sure that's just a coincidence.

 

It now appears that the Sun-Sentinel isn't really at fault. It ran a recycled story from Bloomberg, at least according to the Tribune story explanation:

http://www.sun-sentinel.com/business/chi-united-old-story-sep8,0,2381502.story

 

damn... first thought in my mind was buy, buy, buy.

 

We can fuck up the stock market . . . but we still don't know how to make any real money on the Web.