Newspaper Apologizes for Caption on Web Site

AP via TBO ^ | Nov 12, 2005

[ncountylee]

DANBURY, Conn. (AP) - A newspaper apologized and fired a copy editor for posting an online photo of a girls' soccer team that suggested one of the players was a lesbian.

The Immaculate High School team was celebrating a goal scored in a championship game Nov. 5. But the caption on the Web site of The News-Times said the team was celebrating a teammate's decision to "come out of the closet as a lesbian."

"It was a flagrant, awful violation of every journalistic principle," said Paul Steinmetz, the paper's editor. "It's just embarrassing to us and untenable."

The copy editor, who was not identified, was "goofing around" and did not realize the caption had gone online, Steinmetz said. The bogus caption stayed on the Web page for a few hours on Sunday and received a few hundred hits, he said.

The newspaper, which has a circulation of about 33,000 in western Connecticut, is training more employees to administer its Web site so future errors can be fixed promptly, Steinmetz said.

[Khurkris]

I thought joining the girls' soccer team in the first place amounted to coming out as a lesbian.

Naaaaw...that would be either Wymens Softball or the WNBA.

[OldFriend]

What a despicable thing to do.

But I thought it was only the internet that had no editors or filters and the print and electronic media was safe from such abuse.

[Appalled but Not Surprised]

When I was in high school the cheerleading team was #1 for the state -- so the paper headline read "Cheerleaders Go All The Way."

For about two minutes......

[OldFriend]

Call me old fashioned, but I wish our kids were not fodder for personal attacks at every turn.

Evidently simply honoring their accomplishments is just too difficult.

[MarkL]

Probably not so much at a Catholic school. Take another look at the name...

If it were a public school, then no big deal.

Mark

[manwiththehands]

HOMOPHOBES!

[MarkL]

Naaaaw...that would be either Wymens Softball

Not all womens softball players are that way... Of course, I have to follow the official Free Republic rules...

Jenny Finch!

With her fiance... :-(

Mark

[Jhensy]

As a newspaper veteran of 20 years, I can tell you these things happen once in a while by bored workplace flunkies. A fire-able offense, for sure, but not that uncommon.

Two incidents at places I've worked:

1. For a society page, what was supposed to be picture of some members of a womens club was instead a picture of four crash-test dummies, placed on the page by a joking paste-up artist who then forgot to remove it after he got the laugh from the staff. Fired the next day.

2. In the classifieds, an ad for a waterfront property was supposed to highlight its "50-ft. dock"... but it came out, shall we say, misspelled. And it wasn't "d*ck", either.

No one was fired over this because it couldn't be determined to be a deliberate typo, but knowing some of the jokers at that place...

[ExpatGator]

Really?? Well, I guess I'll have to tell my 15 year-old, soccer playing daughter that she is actually a lesbian. Thanks for straightening us out on this issue, we were so confused in thinking that she was normal.

[jjmcgo]

I worked with a woman who put up the following headline on election night: Morrisville Dems beat off GOP foes.
My all time favorite: Mr. Ellis, after whom the Evansville racetrack is named, had a secretary, Anna Fisher. Years after their deaths, the track ran the annual Anna Fisher Stakes in two divisions.
Daily Racing Form headline: Ellis splits Anna Fisher.

[Appalled but Not Surprised]

Trust me. The altered headline was still perfectly accurate. If unkind.

[Appalled but Not Surprised]

My elder brother works for a fairly prominent newspaper in the Deep South, and he tells me that one "Jack Mehoff" has written several letters to the editor.... as has "Haywood Jablome."

[dighton]

This Double Indemnity, as Wilder called it, was something that derived from an old newspaper story. Back at the dawn of time, back even before Arthur Krock first arrived in Washington to cover the administration of William Howard Taft for the Louisville Times, a terrible thing happened at the printing plant in Louisville. There was an ad in the paper for women’s underwear, as Krock recounted the episode to a young writer [James M. Cain] on the New York World, and it was supposed to say, “If these sizes are too big, take a tuck in them.” But as Krock was reading through that night’s first edition, he saw that someone had changed the first letter in the word “tuck.”

Krock ordered the ad changed for the next edition, then summoned the printer and demanded an explanation. The printer couldn’t provide one. He couldn’t understand how such an embarrassing accident could have happened. Krock remained suspicious. Two days later, he went and interrogated the printer again, in the interrogatory manner that would daunt future presidents and secretaries of state when Krock became Washington bureau chief for the New York Times. The printer confessed. “Mr. Krock,” he said, trying finally to explain, “you do nothing your whole life but watch for something like that happening, so as to head it off, and then, Mr. Krock, you catch yourself watching for chances to do it.”

-- Otto Friedrich, City of Nets.

[aculeus]

In the presence of a Congressman and a Senator I feel that anything I might possibly contribute to this thread would be inadequate.

Moreover, I had some wine with my dinner.

[Khurkris]

Thats a fine young lady and she likes Baseball, which in my opinion is the Ultimate Sport. Good looking couple also. I wish them both well.

[edwin hubble]

Goofing around by headline writers is universal.

the most famous incident happened when Carter was president.

---

On March 15, 1980, the Boston Globe ran an editorial with a fake headline.

There was nothing exceptional about the editorial except the headline: "Mush from the Wimp".

In 1984, the late Kirk Scharfenberg acknowledged that he was the author of the headline. "I meant it as an in-house joke and thought it would be removed before publication," he wrote. "It appeared in 161,000 copies of the Globe the next day."

[LurkedLongEnough]

Fast forward about 30 years, Flux. You don't have to be threatened by a girls' soccer team anymore.

You should now be vigilant of girls' soccer cleats, however. Regardless of sexuality, it's soccer players' love of smashing loose balls into oblivion that has propelled the game into a worldwide sport.