Ahead of a Super Bowl LVIII matchup featuring two of the league’s best tight ends, The New York Times opted to republish Dan Pompei’s feature on how Travis Kelce and George Kittle stack up historically compared to their peers at the position.
Pompei’s story, which was originally published by The Athletic on Feb. 5, is comprehensive and goes all the way back to the origins of the position in the 1960s. That included a brief examination of John Mackey, one of the NFL’s first star tight ends who played for the Baltimore Colts from 1963 to 1971.
But when Pompei’s story was republished in The Times, it included an error that wasn’t present in the original version. Unlike the story in The Athletic, the one that ran in the times referred to Mackey playing for the Indianapolis Colts — despite the Colts not moving from Baltimore until 1984, more than 10 years after Mackey retired.
Can you believe this is in the @nytimes? Wonder if John Mackey was ever in Indianapolis during his life. That’s what happens when you get rid of your sports writers. pic.twitter.com/QbJLehG0It
— michael hill (@amhill) February 9, 2024
Mistakes happen and in the grand scheme of things, this one was relatively minor. While inaccurate, nothing about mistaking Baltimore for Indianapolis changes anything about the rest of the story. In fact, many readers may not have even noticed it.
But from a bigger picture perspective, this error shows the type of challenges The Times faces after disbanding its sports desk in favor of repurposing material from The Athletic, which it purchased in 2022. As noted by Ben Krimmel, the mistake likely stems from The Times incorrectly applying its own style guide to Pompei’s story, which didn’t reference Baltimore or Indianapolis when first mentioning the Colts.
This is NYT printing an Athletic article by @danpompei, who used “Colts” on first reference. NYT print editor changed it to NYT style of ‘full team name’ on first reference for print, but with no sports editors at NYT, made a dumb mistake. https://t.co/rhIvPLncG3
— Ben Krimmel (@BenKrimmel) February 9, 2024
In essence, whoever was editing Pompei’s story for The Times opted to add the team’s city, per the paper’s style guide, and incorrectly went with Indianapolis instead of Baltimore. Again, a relatively minor mistake all things considered. But this is the tradeoff The Times made when it disbanded its sports desk.
And next time, it might not be so lucky.
