Posted on 09/20/2010 8:25:45 PM PDT by hoosierboy
SOUTH BEND — If you ever wondered how much difference just one letter can make when it comes to a message, ask the thousands of people who drove by a digital billboard near the intersection of Ironwood and State Road 23 between Thursday and Monday morning.
The ad urged people to go to the "southbendon.com" website for a look at the "15 best things about our pubic schools." That's right, the billboard said "pubic" instead of "public" schools. The letter "L" had been left out of the word public.
Lee MacMillan of South Bend said his wife spotted the error on Saturday while sitting in traffic.
"She got home and said, ‘I can't believe it said what I think it said,’" MacMillan recalls.
"So we were out driving around yesterday and sure enough, it had that typo in it. So we took a picture and the rest is history, as they say," MacMillan adds.
MacMillan posted the picture he took on Facebook. He also emailed it to his neighbor, South Bend School Superintendent Jim Kapsa.
Responsibility for the spelling error has been claimed by the Blue Waters Group. The company does work for the city of South Bend's redevelopment commission to promote the city.
"I feel terrible. It's a mistake we made and we're guilty of it, and responsible for it. and we take full responsibility for the error," said Patrick Strickler, president of the Blue Waters Group.
"Four people looked at it, eyeballed it and didn't see the mistake, and those people all work for me,” Strickler explained. “We take responsibility for it. We simply blew it. We did not see the missing "L."
He says he became aware of the problem Monday morning.
"We jumped on it and immediately had it taken down by Burkhart. They took it out of rotation and began to repair it," Strickler said.
"We're the ones who made the mistake, not the city or the school," Strickler emphasized.
As of late afternoon on Monday, a representative from the Blue Waters Group indicated the content of the billboard had been fixed and the digital message was up and running again.
You can’t make this stuff up.
Self-fulfilling prophecy...
Hilarious...reminds me of another imbecile who said America has 57 states.
I’m sure it’s on failblog.org already!
Your tax dollars at work.
Nonsense on stilts, and right before the election, too!
I love it!
I fail to see the problem..... meh ;P
And just today his VP said he was 2nd in line for the presidency. I guess Pelosi was pulling a trick on him in case Obama is impeached.
Hm?...So why are “pubic” schools using tax dollars to market their product? Hm?
I’ll bet a teacher wrote it out for the billboard guys.
Spelling error? Yeah, right.
The really horrible thing about this is that it took 5 days for someone to report the error.
You can’t make this stuff up.
Years ago, my wife took a teaching job in New Jersey. She got a letter from the State of New Jersey on her acceptance to teach in that state.
The letterhead on the stationary was: State of New Jersey: Derpartment of Eduction.
NO FOOLIN.
LOL, no way! Biden said that? hahahaha..
Pubic schools. Only happens at South Bend.
Surprised it didn’t cause a crash.
There is a link on Drudge under a photo of Biden with that as a quote. I'm guessing it was from some Biden speech.
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