Candidate for best correction ever list?

From the L.A. Times

Michael Douglas:
An article in Wednesday's Calendar about Michael Douglas receiving the American Film Institute Life Achievement Award said he missed the AFI tribute when his father, Kirk Douglas, received the same award in 1991, and quoted the actor-producer as saying he didn't recall where he was at the time. In fact, the younger Douglas not only attended the ceremony but also served as its host. Douglas said through a spokesman Wednesday that he had forgotten about the event of 18 years ago. Additionally, an accompanying article in which Douglas commented on some of his costars referred to "The War of the Roses" as having been released in 1999. It came out in 1989.

A fun thing about this is that it runs right under a correction about Alzheimer's disease (no disrespect intended).

 

What he should have said was "I forgot all about this. I haven't concentrated on much the last few years besides banging a woman 25 years younger than me."

 

From the Miami Herald:

Last Sunday, The Herald erroneously reported that Dolphin Jimmy Holmes had been an insurance salesman in Raleigh, North Carolina, that he had won the New York lottery in 1982 and lost all his money in a land swindle, that he had been charged with vehicular homicide, but was acquitted because his mother said she drove the car, and that he stated that the funniest thing he ever saw was Flipper spouting water on George Wilson. Each of the items was erroneous material published inadvertently. He was not an insurance salesman in Raleigh, he did not win the lottery, neither was he nor his mother was charged with vehicular homicide, and he made no comment about Flipper or George Wilson.

 

How random is the Herald correction? They're going to get sued over the George Wilson thing -- can't just make up dolphin stories about someone ...

 

My wife's old paper had a reporter insert than an elderly local councilwoman was a "former Playboy bunny" and forgot to take it out.

 

Seriously, how in the fuck does that even happen?

 

IIRC, the reporter interviewed a guy claiming to be Jimmy Holmes but who was an imposter.

 

I think one of the Tucson papers once got fooled into doing a feature on a UofA football player from Australia who supposedly wrestled crocodiles.

 

I'm sure Gallatin, Tenn., circa spring 1998 should be considered. Reporter puts joke quotes in a feature story on a prep soccer player (beastiality, homosexuality, etc.). Editor neglects to read entire story. But I don't have the correction.

 

The Economist ran a correction on a theater review it ran recently that informed readers that they meant to say "genital mutilation" rather than "genetic mutilation" as was printed.

 

The Herald correction is one reason I only said "candidate for the list" and not "candidate for best correction ever."

This is an old, old story, and I believe I can tell it correctly enough that I won't make an egregious error, although it didn't happen during my time there. If I DO make an egregious error, there's at least one person here I know will correct me.

The Herald was doing and anniversary restrospective about the first Dolphins team, and they had a person or people tracking down every member for a big table/graphic they were going to run with the story.

To give that person or those people an idea of what they were looking for, they took a real member of the team -- Johnny Holmes -- and they filled in sample text for each category of the table. And that included the insurance salesman, the lottery, the swindle, the car thing, the mom, and Flipper and George Wilson.

And then, it turns out -- my accuracy might be most suspect here -- Johnny Holmes was one of the few people (or the only one) they didn't actually track down in real life, so nothing was filled in over the sample entry. Nobody knew it wasn't the real thing.

And that's how it made the newspaper. Lots of lessons in there, obviously.

 

And that's why dummy text should always be something unintelligible, such as "XXXXX."

Just like in the sports we cover, if you don't do the little things right every day, eventually it bites you.