Cincinnati magazine has egg on its face after its January issue mocked the Kentucky Post for running this headline: “Murgatroyd still the go-to gay.” (It was of course supposed to be “guy.”)
You know the punchline: The headline never appeared in the Post or anywhere else. The magazine has published this correction on its website:
In our January 2006 issue, an item that appears in the Pork Roast, our satirical end-of-the-year wrap-up, is factually incorrect. The item refers to a headline that purportedly ran on the front page of The Kentucky Post. In fact, the headline in question never ran in The Kentucky Post. The image of the front page with the erroneous headline, which we printed, originally appeared on a local political gossip website known as The Whistleblower. The editors of Cincinnati Magazine deeply regret the error.
The Kentucky Post weighed in with a story about the mistake. Some excerpts are below. And if you enjoy this story, check out this similar one.
…The magazine said The Post ran the headline with the typo - “gay” rather than “guy” - before catching the mistake and correcting it for the second edition.
Magazine editor Jay Stowe said Tuesday the magazine found the headline on the Web site of The Whistleblower, an online daily “newsletter” that skewers the prominent and the powerful across the region with a blend of fact and fiction.Stowe said he and the author of the Pork Roast feature, Jason Cohen, didn’t check out the headline carefully enough.
Stowe said before the feature ran, the magazine made an unsuccessful effort to contact Jim Schifrin, the Anderson Township, Ohio, resident who publishes The Whistleblower.
“We didn’t fact check it and now we have egg on our face. It’s journalism 101,” Stowe said. “The (Post) headline in the Pork Roast did not ever run and we regret the error.”
…Schifrin said he posted the headline on his Web site after receiving it from one of two anonymous sources: “Photoshop Assassin” or “Deep Photo,” two regular contributors whose names he said he doesn’t know.
Schifrin said one of the appealing characteristics of his Web site is that readers don’t know whether the information is fact or fiction.
Post Editor Mike Philipps said his initial reaction to the item in Cincinnati magazine “was that it was a hoax.”
He said he would have known had such an error appeared in the newspaper.
“We get the first copies off the press in the office and it just didn’t happen,” he said.
