The overnight mail envelope from USA Weekend that arrived Tuesday looked like just another set of promotion material intended to build buzz about the magazine.
The package contained a copy of this weekend’s publication but without any enthusiastic declarations trumpeting its content.
Instead, there was a letter suggesting we might want to throw away the 60,000 or so copies that were in our warehouse.
Marcia Bullard, president and CEO of USA Weekend, said in the letter that an illustration, in the magazine, a collage, had background text that contained an "offensive epithet."
"I am extremely chagrined that this unacceptable word found its way into print, " she said. Later in the letter, she added: "I apologize once more for this unintended error, and for any disruption it may cause for you and our readers."
USA Weekend is printed at several locations throughout the country, then shipped by truck to newspaper clients. Nearly 600 newspapers distribute the magazine, and copies for 327 of the publications had been printed when the problem was discovered. It wasn’t possible to print and ship replacement copies for those already out the door.
So what happened at USA Weekend? How could a racial slur find its way into an illustration without anyone noticing? And how could it happen on the weekend the nation was celebrating the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. holiday?
Here’s how Bullard explains it:
"The graphic was supplied by freelance artist Santiago Cohen, who apologized sincerely for his oversight. ‘I know there is no excuse for what happened,’ he said. He selected text from a recent column in the New York Times because ‘I remembered the story … as a warm story of an African American person who had some experiences living in Egypt … I forgot that [the author] used the offensive language. Cohen did not re-read the text before using it in the illustration."
The illustration was part of an article giving tips on being a good storyteller. Nothing in it related to race or the Martin Luther King holiday.
Cohen, in an interview published online by the Poynter Institute, a journalism school, said he feels terrible about the error. "It was my mistake," he said.
But he also pointed out that a lot of other people also looked at his artwork before publication. "I think art directors and editors should create a system for looking more closely at work before it goes to press."
That’s no doubt true, and many newspapers, including this one, will see this as an opportunity to re-examine their processes to make sure there are no holes in their safety nets.
USA Weekend provided publishers with material to explain the situation to readers. One was an apology for newspapers that chose to distribute the magazine, the other was an explanation for papers that decided to drop it this week.
In our minds, there was little doubt about the right course of action. We would send the magazine for recycling and tell readers why. We did offer to reprint the entire magazine with a corrected illustration ourselves, but USA Weekend said it wasn’t able to cover our costs.
In the end, we opted to print the cover story and two popular features at our expense so readers would get at least part of the popular magazine. Those pages appear at the end of our classified employment magazine, Jobsource.
Stan Strick
Herald Executive Editor
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