I am not a huge fan of the Purdue student newspaper, The Exponent; I pick it up mainly for the cryptoquip and crossword. Sometimes, though, a gem can be found within its pages. It’s rare — but if you’re lucky there will be something to amuse you, be it an outrageous news item or ignorant Letter to the Editor. I give you as an example yesterday’s paper:

Monday’s edition featured an article on Mehmet Ali AÄŸca, the person responsible for the creation of the bulletproof Popemobile. The editor obviously wasn’t paying too close attention to yesterday’s FRONT PAGE articles as they passed his eyes, as someone got sloppy with their cutting and pasting:

Did you catch that last sentence?

Mr. Alito, we want answers.
Update: The error was addressed in Wednesday’s edition:


Did you just hear a loud noise coming from the Washington DC area? That was me, laughing my ass off. That’s fantastic.
I thought I heard a cackle. Not that you cackle, Chris, but that’s what I heard here in Indiana.
[...] Curtsy to Annie for catching this gem. Sometimes the campus paper does have some interesting stuff in it. [...]
OMG that’s hilarious.
Who is John Paul? Do they mean the ex-pope?
Anne, I shit myself over in Lauren’s comment thread before catching the props directed at you.
What a marvelous job catching that. You made a not-so-great day several notches better. Now for some wine to ratchet it up to “totally acceptable”!
Yes, Rob, that would be Pope John Paul II.
Chuck, leave it Lauren to steal the glory. At least you could ease out your day.
And Lauren, thanks for not hotlinking the image.
[...] The perils of cut and paste. Funny inadvertant caption here. [...]
Should anyone think it’s a photoshop, you can find the newspaper’s own scan of their front page here:
http://www.purdueexponent.org/mojavi/Update/frontPage/2006/01/10/scan.pdf
Thank you, Allen.
[...] My, did this crack me up. Fuller documentation on educe me. [...]
How, do you suppose, Alito would have responded to Senate Judiciary Committee questioning about this? With a direct answer? Or with “I am keeping an open mind about the Pope”?
Hilarious! Almost as inaccurate as the Cavilier Daily at uva.
Talk About Activist Judges …
No matter how you feel about Samuel Alito’s nomination to the Supreme Court, this will probably make you laugh. (Source here.)
It’s All in the Details
These dang newspaper jobs are such a pain. They expect you to actually read the stories before you go to press. Either that, or Judge Alito has some ’splainin to do. Actually, this is from a student newspaper, so I…
Boy…that’s not gonna get him the confirmation.
That is brilliant.
One of the Glasgow University Newspapers published an article a few months back with junk filler text still in. It said:
“God damn I hate those jews”.
You have to laugh at whoever failed to spot these things.
Me?! I Thought YOU Were Editing The Frontpage!
One of the perpetual legacy media gripes against blogs is about how we don’t have editors, as opposed to their careful layered system of fact checking. Yet sometimes that system doesn’t seem so foolproof.
Check out the last sentence in the…
It’s typical newspaper. the Oregonian just raised their price again and over 80% of their news is from re-pasting news from someplace else. I think most of them are now owned by the same illiterate set of clowns.
god save the exponent!
You Exponent lover.
That Might Be a Problem
Well, things were looking so good for Judge Alito’s confirmation… until they found this. I wonder if that will cost him the senate confirmation….
Typical. These Republicans constantly trying to get away with bloody murder. I’m just glad that a “fair and balanced” newspaper like the Exponent has the investigative resources to uncover the truth. Great job!