Newspaper blames technical error for hilarious headline blunder
"We are still looking into how this happened and want our readers to know we take this seriously."
Spare a thought for staff at daily newspaper Cambridge News whose spectacular front page blunder has the internet cracking up.
Their headline for Wednesday's edition (December 6) read: '100PT SPLASH HEADING HERE', after a staff member clearly forgot to update placeholder text.
Anyone who has studied journalism will know that a splash is the industry term for the daily edition's front page story.
Political analyst Chris Rand spotted the error and posted it to his Twitter account with the caption: "Wow. It's real. This'll be featured in newspaper sub-editing courses for years. And available at all good newsagents near you today, folks."
His tweet has been met with hilarity so far on social media. Already it has been retweeted over 2,000 times since it was posted earlier today.
Generations to come will talk of the Great 100PT Splash of 2017 and how the townsfolk of Cambridge laughed at the warnings that could have saved them.
— Matt Crivelli (@MattCrivelli) December 6, 2017
I've seen numerous stories supposedly written by a journalist called Name Surname, but never anything as bad as this!
— Joseph W 🇪🇺🇬🇧 (@whittertron) December 6, 2017
But how was the 100PT Splash allowed in the country ?
— Richard Wilkinson (@mrrwilkinson) December 6, 2017
And to think this is the paper that got the JFK tip-off!
— Gary Shepherd (@GaryShepherd) December 6, 2017
So many readers waiting with bated breath for the 100pt splash to arrive. Whatever they think it is.
— Steve Turtle (@steveturtle) December 6, 2017
Some even have their own conspiracy theory about the mistake:
Sold out eh? I wonder if this is an exciting new way to boost sales.
— john hodgson (@johnhodgson) December 6, 2017
You think this is an error? Lots more people now talking about Cambridge News. McDonald’s did something similar on Twitter recently. All planned.
— Jay (@Jay_MND) December 6, 2017
Cambridge News has now apologised to readers for the mistake which seems to be entirely innocent.
On their website they wrote:
"The Cambridge News is issuing an apology to its readers after an error with the front page of today's (December 6) edition of the newspaper.
Due to a technical problem, the main headline did not appear on the Cambridge edition, although the correct one was printed in the Cambourne edition of the paper."
Editor-in-chief David Bartlett said: "I want to apologise sincerely to our readers for this mistake, which happened due to a technical problem.
"We are still looking into how this happened and want our readers to know we take this seriously."
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