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 ex-ME, The Times went big. 

Our editor assigned another reporter (not me) to write a nice story about Hyde’s candidacy with a two-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 last name wrong. We called him Herbert HAYES. The paper ran a two-sentence correction, but we didn’t talk much about it afterwards. The mistake didn’t do much for the ex-ME’s credibility with the candidate, who lost the election.