If you only take away one thing from journalism school, it’s get your facts straight.
Unfortunately for Bud Poliquin of The Post-Standard in Syracuse, N.Y., he found out the hard way what happens when your facts are wrong.
In an online column on Tuesday about the New York Yankees, Poliquin wrote, “After last year’s anomaly wherein the all-and-powerful Yankees did not qualify for the playoffs — a development that had religious leaders debating the addition of another Testament to the Bible — does anybody think that MLB wants its televised post-season to ever again be New York-less?”
Oops.
You mean the same Yankees team that won the World Series didn’t make the playoffs?
Now only would that be impossible, it’s also factually incorrect.
Readers were quick to point out the error and the column was corrected to say 2008.
Poliquin’s punishment for his gaffe was Bart Simpson-esque:
Thanks to those astute visitors to this part of cyberspace who caught my gaffe in this space on Tuesday, I have been properly chastised. And as part of my punishment, I’ve been sent to the electronic blackboard where I’ve been instructed to write, exactly 50 times, this sentence:
Despite my pre-corrected suggestion to the contrary, the New York Yankees did qualify for the 2009 MLB playoffs and they rather gloriously won the World Series, too.
Poliquin went on to paste the above sentence 50 times. This is either the laziest column ever or the most creative depending on who you ask.
Regardless, it’s not a tactic SportsNewser plans to implement in the future.