A Correction

It happened in 1976 while I worked for The Times in Thomasville, North Carolina. The managing editor had resigned to work for Herbert Hyde, a member of the legislature who was running for lieutenant governor.

While campaigning across the state, Hyde and the ex-ME dropped into the newsroom to chat with the editor. That was the custom for candidates back then, when newspaper editorial pages had more influence. Most candidates usually got a short story and a small photo that ran inside the paper. Because Hyde had hired our friend, The Times went big. 

Our editor assigned another reporter (not me) to write a nice story about Hyde’s candidacy with a three-column photo of Hyde and the ex-ME. It was very favorable coverage except for one thing. The headline, the photo caption, and and the copy got Herbert Hyde’s name wrong. We called him Henry Hoover. The paper ran a correction, but we didn’t talk much about it afterwards.