“A report in the Nocturnalist column on Saturday misidentified the material used to create a puppet of Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg that made an appearance at an exhibition of Jim Henson’s work at the Museum of the Moving Image in Queens. Muppets, in general, are made of fleece, foam, fake fur and fabric. A spokeswoman for The Jim Henson Company refused to be more specific about the materials used to make Muppet Mayor Bloomberg (Bluppet to his friends), saying, ‘We consider the ‘magic’ that goes into how we make our puppets as trade secrets and beyond the info I gave, we really can’t be more specific.’ What is known is that Bluppet is not made of felt.” — The New York Times
Bonus Archival Phone Hacking Correction
“THE graphic accompanying yesterday’s article, ‘Police to reopen phone hacking investigation as more witnesses emerge’ ( 9 September 2010), we wrongly stated that Les Hinton had died in 2009. We are aware that he is very much alive and is the CEO of Dow Jones Company Inc. We regret our error and apologise to him.” — The Independent (U.K.)
Update and Correction July 26, 2011: I struck the sentence “No one else in the press wanted to touch the Watergate story” from this column after hearing from W. Joseph Campbell, a professor at American University and an expert in media myths. He gave me permission to quote from an e-mail in which he notes that other media were on the Watergate story:
That’s part of the mythology of Watergate, that the Post was alone on the story for months. Alicia Shepard, in her book about Woodward and Bernstein, says (p. 58) that “there was more reporting going on [about Watergate] than is generally acknowledged.”During the period June 17-December 31, 1972, WaPo ran 201 staff-written articles on Watergate, according to figures Shepard cites. The NYT carried 99 staff-written stories, LAT published 45 staff-written stories. WaPo may have been ahead (it was, after all, a Washington story), but it wasn’t alone.
LAT’s most memorable Watergate coups was its report, published October 5, 1972, that quoted at length Alfred C. Baldwin, a former FBI agent who monitored the bugs that had been planted in the DNC’s headquarters at the Watergate.
I would add to your short list about Woodward/Bernstein Watergate-related mistakes their ill-advised approach to federal grand jurors hearing Watergate-related testimony. As they discuss in their book, All the President’s Men, that scheme nearly landed them in jail, as I discuss here:
http://wp.me/pGR12-2gS
I’m grateful to him for pointing out my error.
