The Power of One Incorrect Word; a Tragic Fire in Palm Desert–Coachella Valley Independent’s Indy Digest: April 15, 2024

Indy Digest: April 15, 2024

(Editor’s note: Just before we were about to hit “send” on this Digest late Monday afternoon, our email-newsletter software crashed, and was down all evening—hence the lateness of this newsletter. Our apologies!)

At most jobs, if someone has a brain fart and makes a minor mistake, it’s no big deal. The minor mistake is fixed; few people notice; life goes on.

In journalism, if someone has a brain fart and makes a minor mistake, the entire world can know—and it can be a major source of embarrassment.

Just ask the Los Angeles Times. A writer there had a brain fart on Friday that was missed by an editor, allowing right-wing media sources to have a field day, as shown by this Fox News piece with the headline “Trump’s name ‘incorrectly’ used in LA Times’ OJ Simpson obituary: ‘Freud Lives’“:

Former President Trump’s name made an unexpected appearance in an O.J. Simpson obituary on Thursday.

The Los Angeles Times reported on the death of the 76-year-old former NFL running back earlier in the morning, detailing his prolific sports career as well as his infamous 1994 double murder trial.

However, at one point further down the obituary, the article originally referred to “Trump” being released from prison instead of Simpson.

“Long before the city woke up on a fall morning in 2017, Trump walked out of Lovelock Correctional Center outside Reno, a free man for the first time in nine years,” the obituary read. “He didn’t go far, moving into a 5,000-square-foot home in Las Vegas with a Bentley in the driveway.”

The line was later corrected with an editor’s note acknowledging the mistake.

Of course, the Fox News piece includes speculation that the use of “Trump” in connection with “prison” was wishful thinking on the part of the writer. Frankly, that may very well have been the case.

Or, it could have just been a dumb mistake. I, fairly frequently, will use a wrong word if something distracts me; I’ll swap a word from the distraction into a sentence where it does not belong.

Regardless of what happened, dumb, little mistakes like this happen in journalism all the time.

In the spirit of camaraderie with the folks at the Los Angeles Times, and for your amusement, I’ll tell you about the two most-embarrassing little journalism mistakes I’ve been involved with, both of which happened during my time as the editor of a weekly newspaper in Tucson:

• I’d written a restaurant review of a Mexican seafood place—and it just so happened this review was published in our Best Of issue, our biggest and most-popular edition of the year. At one point in the review, I was describing the restaurant’s “delicious crab flautas.” Except I didn’t type “crab.” I typed “crap.” Don’t ask me how I accomplished this; the “p” and “b” keys are nowhere near each other. But accomplish it, I did.

• Finally, the most embarrassing error with which I’ve been involved regards something I missed as an editor. An intern had interviewed someone from a local LGBTQ+ organization for our community Q&A feature. After the interview was published, the subject reached out and thanked us for the piece, and was effusive in his praise … but asked if we could make a minor correction, because one, single word had been misquoted.

The piece, as initially published, included a portion in which he explained how he grew up in the South—specifically, in the “butthole of the Bible Belt.” Of course, he actually said “buckle.” Which makes a lot more sense. Somehow, I missed this in my edit.

When it came time for me to talk to the intern about the mistake, I kept cracking up, unable to stop laughing. When I finally managed to explain what had happened, the intern was utterly mortified.

—Jimmy Boegle

More News

• It’s rare that news stories rattle me personally—but the news regarding the fire that destroyed four businesses in the Bristol Farms shopping center in Palm Desert on Sunday did just that. News Channel 3 reports: “The four businesses affected include D’Coffee Bouteaque, Papa Dan’s Pizza & Pasta, Miracle-Ear Hearing Aid Center, and Reverse Mortgage Works. ‘I mean, look at it is gone. There’s nothing there,’ said Miriam Rodriguez, owner of D’Coffee Bouteaque. Miriam and her husband watched as fire fighters put out the last embers of the major commercial fire. For Rodriguez, seeing her beloved coffee shop reduced to rubble was emotional and overwhelming.” I am a huge fan of D’Coffee Bouteaque, and I’m heartbroken to see what happened to it and the four other businesses in that building. Watch the Independent for updates.

• Speaking of news we’ll be covering more as things develop: Google fired a major (and unfortunate) warning shot in the battle over a proposed California bill that would make the company pay a lot of money to news organizations. CNBC explains: “Google will begin removing links to California news websites from search results for some Californians in response to a bill that would require online ad companies to pay a fee for connecting state residents to news sources. In a blog post on Friday announcing the ‘short-term test,’ Jaffer Zaidi, Google’s vice president of global news partnership, said the bill, called the California Journalism Preservation Act, represents ‘the wrong approach to supporting journalism’ and ‘would create a level of business uncertainty that no company could accept.’ The bill was introduced last year and remains pending in the state Legislature.” I will have a *LOT* to say on this soon.

• The city of Palm Springs is proposing reparations payments to survivors of the Section 14 evictions. Our friends at the Palm Springs Post report: “The city of Palm Springs has proposed a compensation plan for its role in evictions from Section 14 in the 1960s, offering to pay for verifiable real and personal property losses totaling an estimated $4.3 million. The proposal was sent to lawyers representing a group of former residents of the land and their descendants Thursday evening, shortly before the city announced a series of new initiatives aimed at acknowledging its part in the evictions. … The $4.3 million figure, arrived at years after the city agreed to offer some form of reparations for those who were evicted from land owned by the Agua Caliente Band of Cahuilla Indians, is a fraction of what the attorneys were seeking. According to information supplied to The Post, as of March 8, the Section 14 Survivors organization was seeking between $187 million and $366 million for damage to 350 homes and the destruction of personal property.”

• The U.S. Supreme Court today took an action (or, rather, didn’t take an action) that makes mass protests basically illegal in three states, at least for now. Vox says: “The Supreme Court announced on Monday that it will not hear Mckesson v. Doe. The decision not to hear Mckesson leaves in place a lower court decision that effectively eliminated the right to organize a mass protest in the states of Louisiana, Mississippi, and Texas. Under that lower court decision, a protest organizer faces potentially ruinous financial consequences if a single attendee at a mass protest commits an illegal act. It is possible that this outcome will be temporary. The Court did not embrace the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit’s decision attacking the First Amendment right to protest, but it did not reverse it either. That means that, at least for now, the Fifth Circuit’s decision is the law in much of the American South.” Yikes.

• Roku customers’ information may have been revealed as part of a large data breach. CNN says: “About 576,000 Roku accounts were compromised in a cyberattack, the company said on Friday, the second security breach for the streaming service this year. Hackers gained access to user accounts through stolen login credentials, Roku said in a blog post. The security breach was discovered while Roku monitored account activity after a cyberattack affected 15,000 accounts earlier this year. In each instance, fraudsters used a cyberattack method known as credential stuffing: Hackers try login and password information leaked in one data breach on a variety of users’ accounts, exploiting people who use the same credentials across different accounts. (Experts recommend people use different passwords for each of their online accounts.) Credentials used to access Roku accounts were likely from a data breach on a different site, the company said in a statement.”

• Our partners at CalMatters explain, as the headline states, “Why tortillas sold in California may be forced to add a new ingredient.” The story says: “Corn chips, tortillas, tamales and pupusas—while all delicious—may be missing a key vitamin for women of reproductive age. Folic acid has long been used to prevent serious birth defects and help babies develop. Medical and public health experts advise daily consumption during pregnancy, but also in the months before becoming pregnant. This B vitamin is so important the federal government requires folic acid in certain foods such as enriched breads and cereals. Now a California lawmaker is carrying a bill that would require manufacturers of corn masa flour—used to make many classic Latino foods—to also add folic acid to their products. Assemblymember Joaquin Arambula, a Fresno Democrat and physician, is carrying Assembly Bill 1830. The legislation would require that producers add 0.7 milligrams of folic acid to every pound of masa, and that this addition be reflected in the nutrition label.”

• And finally … let’s end with some good news: California is making major strides in terms of renewable energy. Newsweek explains: “Renewable energy has supplied 100 percent of California’s energy demand for between 15 minutes and six hours in 30 of the last 38 days—a historic first for the Golden State. Wind, solar and hydro energy is now exceeding demand across the state, producing more energy than Californians require on an almost daily basis. California has previously seen great success with its renewable energy supply, but this is the first time that wind, solar, and hydro energy have performed so consistently over a sustained period of several weeks. ‘This is getting so easy, it’s almost boring,’ said Stanford University Professor Mark Z. Jacobson, who posted the renewable energy usage data on X, announcing that supply has exceeded California’s demand for 30 of the past 38 days. … The professor also predicted that California would be solely reliant on wind, water, and solar energy by 2035 following the recent success. The state’s official goal is to run exclusively renewable a decade later, however, in 2045.”

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