Actually, the mistake isn't so terrible, but it's kind of funny -- and shows the peril of wisecracking on a news Web site.
A reader e-mailed me the screenshot above of a heading on KansasCity.com's Chiefs page. It read, "More on the terrible, terrible Chiefs." By the time I looked at the e-mail, the text was nowhere to be found on the page.
I've heard from several readers about my Sunday column on how news of Ted Kennedy's death hit almost too late to make any print editions of the next day's Star. In the end, roughly 60 percent of the press run got a note on A-1 pointing to a story on A-3.
A couple suggested that not having remade the entire page at 12:25 a.m. shows why newspapers are "behind the times," as one put it.
A self-described "nervous diabetic" called me this morning about a "Starwatch Consumer" item in today's paper:
The Food and Drug Administration is warning consumers to avoid certain vials of insulin made by Novo Nordisk that were stolen earlier this year and may not be safe for use.
"What I worry about is what some people might take out of this," said the reader. "I called my pharmacist and she told me that I was OK, but how many other diabetics might just quit using it because they're afraid it isn't the right stuff?"
A new test-market "sandwich" from KFC has been making the Internet rounds recently, and a poll about whether readers would want to try it or not showed up on KansasCity.com's Stargazing blog last night. The item used a photo of the "Double Down" that has shown up all over the place -- but without credit.
An e-mailer this morning was chagrined to find news of the death of Sen. Edward Kennedy on Page A-3 of her paper. She wrote, in part:
A very good question from an e-mailer:
In the (Aug. 24) front page article it mentions "H1N1 virus" and "H1N1 vaccine". In the page 4 article it mentions the "H1N1 virus". What is the "H1N1 virus" and "H1N1 vaccine"?What do they have to do with "swine flu"?
I understood the press was going to discontinue the use of "swine flu" and refer to it as "H1N1"? It sure would help us senior citizens understand what you are talking about. Maybe other readers also!
A note from a reader about a photo gallery of this past weekend's Ethnic Enrichment Festival in Swope Park:
"Your photos are nice, but it would be A WHOLE LOT BETTER if you could put some effort into the captions, instead of recycling the same one over and over. Please put some thought into this. This makes the website look weak and, for a big city newspaper, your readers deserve more."
I've heard from many readers who object to C.W. Gusewelle's Sunday column on the front of the Local section, where he goes after Republicans pretty strongly.
"He's entitled to what he wants to believe," said one, "but we have plenty of Republican bashing in the Opinion section. Why does he get that space to write about things we don't care his opinion on?"
I've heard more comment about today's A-1 story on some people's anger at the state of the nation than any single story in a while. It's been all over the map, to be honest, but the debate is healthy and has been almost universally productive.
Some conservative readers have felt that the story was too dismissive of their point of view, particularly their objections to how quickly the president and Congress have been trying to implement health care reform.
Boy, I hate this. Today's paper has a correction to a story that ran on Aug. 18 about Mauro Pacheco, who was killed by robbers in his family hair salon Aug. 10.
The problem is that the story didn't run on Aug. 18 -- it was on Aug. 13.
Not that big a deal necessarily, but it could definitely confuse anyone who had kept the paper and wanted to refer back to the original story.
