What the hell is journalism coming to in an age where The New York Times has to issue a correction because one of its travel writers “misstated” the name of the Millennium Falcon in Star Wars?
On Tuesday, travel writer Elaine Glusac wrote a piece titled “Star Wars: Coming to a Theme Park Near You” for the NYT travel section. It’s great short piece about Disney’s plans to implement the wildly successful creations of its recent purchase, Lucasfilm into both existing and new theme parks.
However, Michael Steel, a former spokesperson for the soon-to-resign Speaker of the House John Boehner, pointed out a rather interesting “addition” to the article earlier this morning:
.@ademillo The most amazing thing about this story is the correction: @nytimes initially got the name of Han Solo’s ship wrong.
— Michael Steel (@michael_steel) September 30, 2015
The night before, The TODAY Show‘s social media manager, Anthony Quintano posted a screengrab of the correction for the TL;DR crowd:
The @NYTimes with another award winning correction http://t.co/eo0PQiPklF #StarWars pic.twitter.com/DZwRvdVmnP — Anthony Quintano (@AnthonyQuintano) September 30, 2015
This set off a collective Twitter tirade, fueled primarily by bored journalists:
Ban the @nytimes http://t.co/7feQVKsFSY (h/t @michael_steel) pic.twitter.com/Ih1B4E3F2u
— Brett LoGiurato (@BrettLoGiurato) September 30, 2015
This is honestly unforgivable, @nytimes. https://t.co/zEjTp8VeIw — Frank Pallotta (@frankpallotta) September 30, 2015
@michael_steel: “Apology accepted, New York Times.” pic.twitter.com/LPSj48Vt2W
— Eric Geller (@ericgeller) September 30, 2015
@michael_steel totally a fireable offense. — Andrew DeMillo (@ademillo) September 30, 2015
@AnthonyQuintano is it wrong for me to love the NYT’s sweetly nerdy corrections like these?
— Angela M Tant (@amtant1972) September 30, 2015
This NYT correction killed my faith in media. http://t.co/I6axRkE8Vl pic.twitter.com/jB4COoJgZP
— Andrea Peterson (@kansasalps) September 30, 2015
PLEASE LOOK AT THE CORRECTION AT THE END OF THE ARTICLE IT IS EVERYTHING: Star Wars’ Coming to a Theme Park Near You http://t.co/DgqDoPp7KU
— AmelieSaysHola (@AmelieSaysHola) September 30, 2015
Ever the NYT‘s Tweeter-in-Chief, writer David Itzkoff responded to it in the best way possible:
To those upset about a Star Wars correction in the NYT, I say live long and prosper
— Dave Itzkoff (@ditzkoff) September 30, 2015
[h/t Michael Steel]
[Image via screengrab]
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