It is customary for journalists, when discovering a particularly juicy typo at another publication, to exclaim, "Jesus, don't they have any editors over there?" But that seems to be entirely superfluous in this case, which fairly screams, "No, no they don't."
I worked at a college paper last year. We had some screwups, but none this bad. I'd bet that they did a cost analysis and found that the "final check" desk was the most expensive, because it was making 2:00 am calls to reporters and racking up all sorts of re-print costs, so they cut back there.
Headline desk says, "check it without headlines and I'm gonna insert them later" then neglects to, then one overrun guy at the final check desk sees an ok format and doesn't check, then disaster.
Possible on the wrong file sent, but there could still be staff cutbacks at play, if they cut the person who does a check on the printing plates themselves or the person who checks the first printed copies as they come off.
I'm going to guess that this was either a software bug (such as a crash when the software tried to replace those placeholders with the real values) or a human error where the replacement values weren't in the correct format (example: they might have required a '#' before each replacement value).
Let me suggest finding something a bit better to take them to task over. As much as I think he's a tool in general, Patterico has had some sort of an impact even if he worked less but smarter he could have a far greater impact. Here's a list of my posts mentioning or specifically about their articles:
But... but... but... newspapers have all these layers of editors to prevent mistakes unlike blogs that make all kinds of mistakes. We can trust newspapers because they have such great quality control...
This is more glaring but whenever I read a newspaper article about something I have personal knowledge of, I am always astounded at the fundamental errors in the article.
I worked at a college paper last year. We had some screwups, but none this bad. I'd bet that they did a cost analysis and found that the "final check" desk was the most expensive, because it was making 2:00 am calls to reporters and racking up all sorts of re-print costs, so they cut back there.
Headline desk says, "check it without headlines and I'm gonna insert them later" then neglects to, then one overrun guy at the final check desk sees an ok format and doesn't check, then disaster.
thedailywtf has been documenting these kinds of blunders for years now. Pretty hilarious reading...
Here's The SF Chronicle last July.
Here's Picadilly Square in London.
And gotta love the giant Windows calculator at Paris Las Vegas.
The LA Times has really been good for nothing more than a dog trainer for years now.
They have nothing but contempt for half of their potential readers, and so now they are in a death cycle of cost cuts and deterioration of standards.
Huh... it could either be that they've fired too many people and their workload is too high.
A strange mistake in the wrong file getting sent to the printer (they caught the error, fixed it, and send the old file by mistake)
Or someone wanting to send a message that they've fired too many people and they're going to let something slide through to prove a point.
I prefer the conspiracy theory. Or option 2, wrong file sent.
Sam,
Possible on the wrong file sent, but there could still be staff cutbacks at play, if they cut the person who does a check on the printing plates themselves or the person who checks the first printed copies as they come off.
Hey! We are all sad or contemptuous. Think how we would have roasted our hostess if it had happened on her blog.
I'm going to guess that this was either a software bug (such as a crash when the software tried to replace those placeholders with the real values) or a human error where the replacement values weren't in the correct format (example: they might have required a '#' before each replacement value).
Let me suggest finding something a bit better to take them to task over. As much as I think he's a tool in general, Patterico has had some sort of an impact even if he worked less but smarter he could have a far greater impact. Here's a list of my posts mentioning or specifically about their articles:
http://24ahead.com/s/los-angeles-times
But... but... but... newspapers have all these layers of editors to prevent mistakes unlike blogs that make all kinds of mistakes. We can trust newspapers because they have such great quality control...
This is more glaring but whenever I read a newspaper article about something I have personal knowledge of, I am always astounded at the fundamental errors in the article.