On Monday, the Lexington Herald-Leader ran a front page column from John Clay arguing that University of Kentucky shouldn’t pay its men’s basketball head coach’s $33 million buyout for him to go away.
There was just one problem. As noted by Kentucky Sports Radio’s Matt Jones, rather than referring to the Wildcats head coach as John Calipari, the paper’s headline — at least in the print edition — called him “Kalipari.”
I mean this is a Front page, above the fold spelling error of the name of the most famous man in the state
How? pic.twitter.com/jOnvMXN5Ha
— Matt Jones (@KySportsRadio) March 25, 2024
Look, mistakes happen, but this one is especially egregious. To Jones’ point, Calipari is arguably the biggest celebrity in the Bluegrass State. And his $8.6 million salary makes him the highest paid public employee in the entire state.
Even taking aside Calipari’s substantial status as a national championship-winning head coach in a basketball-obsessed state and he’s, if nothing else, somebody the paper considered worthy of putting on its front page. No media outlet is going to be 100 percent error-free, but — excuse the pun — this should have been a slam dunk and it’s difficult to comprehend how such a mistake could even occur.
Despite serving Lexington, it’s worth noting that the Herald-Leader has been published nearly 80 miles away in Louisville since 2016. According to Poynter, the McClatchy Company, which owns the Herald-Leader, began outsourcing its page design and typesetting in 2021, although it’s unclear whether that is what was responsible for this disconnect.
For what it’s worth, the online version of the column contains the correct spelling of Calipari’s name, as does the online archive of the print version.
Still, screenshots live forever. And Jones’ provides proof of one of the more baffling newspaper misspellings in recent memory.
