Tampa Tribune
Normally, we at the Planet would pile on the Trib for one of their gaffes. But this was a screw-up of such epic proportions that we actually feel a bit sorry for them. You know the one: The Lightning editorial. The Trib prepared two editorials — one in case of a win, one in case of a loss — to run the day after Game Seven between the Bolts and Flames. Someone placed the they-lost-but-they´re-still-champs-to-us version in the dummied paper. Somehow, and this is a big somehow, that editorial ended up running in every single edition, all 275,000 copies. This just wasn´t egg on your face, this was a Denver omelet shoved up your nose. The paper got mocked, locally and nationally, and that had to sting staff members. Still, let us remember that no real harm was done. Plus, kudos to the Trib´s top brass for not throwing someone on their sword (publisher Gil Thelen said publicly that no one would be canned or punished). One nagging question remains, though: Why did the Trib use the ¨Lightning lost¨ version in the dummies? Wouldn´t it have been better mojo to dummy the ¨Lightning won¨ take?
This article appears in Sep 22-28, 2004.