Tuesday, January 27, 2009

Kansas City Star prints 10-day old stock table

The Kansas City Star inexplicably printed 10 day-old stock news in today's newspaper. From KC Star readers representative Derek Donovan:
It didn't take long for a reader to notice this one: Today's regional stocks table on Page D-21 of the Business section looked weird to a caller -- because he'd already seen it earlier this month. On Saturday, Jan. 17, in fact.

Today's the 27th, so I'm betting a typo was involved in transmitting or formatting the info. It really should have been caught, because two of today's columns have "Friday close" and "Friday change" as labels, which should have been a clear indicator that this was an end-of-week summary.

I'll talk with the Business department about how to address this in print tomorrow. Ouch.

Hat tip: comments
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10 comments:

Anonymous said...

HAHAHAHA. Maybe they did because on that day MNI trade over a $1

Ball washing amateurs

Kevin Gregory said...

I wouldn't be surprised if it was done on purpose by disillusioned employees.

Anonymous said...

The stocks pages are out-sourced to an outside service page creation service. These electronic page files are then downloaded into the pagination system for each edition.

The shrinking newsroom depends on automation for page make-up, nowadays. It’s this dependancy, and absence of human driven checking steps, that creates these embarrassments.

But it’s the Stocks page. One day, newspapers will comprehend that a limited listing of stale data is useless to real traders.

Anonymous said...

Odd how old stale business news hangs around for days, but another high interest plane crash story evaporates before our eyes. McClatchy needs some quality control people. I wonder how many rupees that would cost?

Anonymous said...

Checking with Rhonda, “Z and me was slumming in KC, registering to vote and all. Business, shizness! Old stock reports, Who cares? “I love you. You love me. We're a happy family….”

Anonymous said...

The KC Scar has more than one ouch.

Anonymous said...

Who is minding the store?

Anonymous said...

Who is minding the store?
------------------------
Jason "ACORN" Whitlock

The Jackson County Courthouse Inmate Union Local No 13 - Deann Smith

Fag Hags R Us - Mary Sanchez

Tranny Ho's in Print - Ron Lokeman

Emanual Cleaver's Affirmative Action and Former Felon Coalition

Cross Dressers in Journalism- Co Chaired by Derrick Donovan and Mike Hendricks

We're hanilin it. Sunder control.

Anonymous said...

The Star's stock pages are not outsourced. They are created on-site. The problem was: The template that was used for Jan. 27 was designed to be used only when financial markets are closed on Monday ... as they were the previous week for MLK Day. Somebody used the wrong template, so the table picked up the Jan. 16 closing prices.

rknil said...

"It really should have been caught"

The motto of today's dysfunctional newsrooms.