Designing similar pages across papers is one of the great perceived benefits of regional newspaper chains, reducing the amount of manpower needed for page design, but a clear downside is that a mistake in one paper can very quickly become a mistake in multiple papers. That’s the case for Advance Publications‘ MLive Media Group in Michigan, which saw many of its papers mix up the team the Detroit Lions actually lost to Sunday (the New York Giants) with the team they’re playing this coming week (the Dallas Cowboys):
In the old days, this kind of nightmare front page headline error would cause publishers to order papers pulled out of newspaper boxes… pic.twitter.com/C5oQinteUq
— Chad Livengood (@ChadLivengood) December 19, 2016
This is one of the problems with vertical integration, perhaps even more noticeable then when the corn chip companies own the diarrhea remedies. A mistake in one paper can quickly spread to a whole lot of papers this way, and when it’s on the front page, that’s especially problematic. The photo choice here also didn’t help; if this had been a typical action shot with players from both teams involved, the headline writer would have realized that the Lions were facing the Giants, not the Cowboys, but using a shot of a field goal attempt means there are no opposing players to check.
In any case, it’s certainly possible this headline will wind up being correct after all. The 9-5 Lions face the 12-2 Cowboys Monday night in Arlington, and Dallas (6-1 at home) will certainly be favored. If they can indeed pull off the win, these headlines may wind up being accurate (and hey, “roped by” is a decent pun by sportswriter standards). These papers just ran with it a week too early.
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