The groups responsible for this week’s fake edition of The New York Times took great care to produce a newspaper that looked like the real thing. They mimicked the paper’s fonts and layout, included an imagined column by Thomas Friedman, and even launched an accompanying website. Regular Times readers also experienced the familiar sensation of finding corrections tucked away in the front section. Here’s one of the spoof corrections:
The Times apologizes for under-reporting the effects and dangers of media consolidation, perhaps due to our own efforts at media consolidation: The Times owns almost two dozen regional newspapers, a number of television and radio stations, and partial shares in the Red Sox and the Discovery Channel. We now recognize this conflict of interest. No newspaper should concern itself with maximizing profits, and the paper of record should be held to an even higher standard than the rest of the publishing industry. Over the next two months, The Times will voluntarily trust-bust itself, thus contributing to the independence of American journalism.
Yes, even the fake corrections were kept on message. (The other offerings dealt with media accountability, the death toll in Iraq, editorial independence, and the environment.) In the past, those who have dreamed up corrections have taken a less serious approach. The Stranger, a weekly in Seattle, ended 2003 by publishing a series of corrections for things that weren’t exactly factual errors:
David Schmader, associate editor of The Stranger, regrets that dogs and cats are no longer allowed to behave like normal dogs and cats in television commercials, but are forced via computer graphics to breakdance or lip-synch or both.
Charles Mudede regrets that booze has ruined his marriage, placed him deeper into debt, and delivered several blows to his health; yet even now, as he writes this sentence, all he can think about is his first drink of the day, which will be at lunchtime and probably red wine.
The paper did the same thing a year later:
The Stranger regrets that the word “ubiquitous” appeared at least 23 times in The Stranger in 2004.
When he was editing Forbes FYI, novelist and newly minted conservative traitor Christopher Buckley also turned to fake corrections:
Due to a computer error, FYI’s special issue on the 2000 Presidential election was published in Tagalog. An English version is being prepared for publication.
The cover article in the July issue, “Now Is the Time to Load up on Tech Stocks,” incorrectly stated the actual right time. The time to buy tech stocks was July 1999, not 2001.
More recent examples come from this year’s seventy-fifth anniversary issue of Esquire. The magazine used the correction format to poke fun at some of its famous stories, subjects and photographs. These are more akin to stand-up comedy corrections:
The caption of the era-defining photograph “Harlem 1958,” published in January 1959, contained an error. The photo does not include fifty-seven of the greatest names in jazz but some folks hanging out by the 125th Street subway stop during a train delay. We regret the error.
Due to a copy editor’s misunderstanding, the headline of Tom Wolfe’s November 1963 feature “There goes (VAROOM! VAROOM!) that Kandy Kolored (THPHHHHHH!) tangerine-flake streamline baby (RAHGHHHH!) around the bend (BRUMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM. . . . . .” was misprinted. The correct headline was “Crrazy Kids and Their Crrazy Cars.”
EDITOR’S NOTE AND A CLARIFICATION:
For the last couple of years, our cover models have stood in front of the words, blocking them and making them difficult to read. They should have been told to take a few steps to the left or right.Also, Frank Sinatra had chlamydia.
Good night, folks!
Correction of the Week
In our November 3 issue, we suggested that the actress Kelly Reilly was having a relationship with Guy Ritchie.
It is now clear from the further information that we have received that Ms. Reilly is engaged and there is and has been no romantic relationship between Kelly Reilly and Guy Ritchie. We apologize for any embarrassment caused to Ms. Reilly in our original report. – Us Weekly
Death by Media
Jimmy Carl Black obituary: The obituary of musician Jimmy Carl Black in Thursday’s California section said he married a German woman after his first wife died. His first wife, Loretta, whom he divorced, is alive. – Los Angeles Times
Parting Shot
Due to an editing error, an article and caption in yesterday’s Herald misstated the event captured in a 1976 photo. An American flag was aimed to spear the man in the photo, but he was not stabbed by the flagpole. The Herald regrets the error. – Boston Herald
Craig Silverman is currently BuzzFeed's media editor, and formerly a fellow at the Tow Center for Digital Journalism.