Newsday.com F's Up Oscar

Newsday, a New York City-area paper, printed a significant blunder in a headline on its Web site today. The mistake was captured and submitted by an anonymous reader. As you can see in the highlighted screen shot below, in a headline for a story about Hugh Jackman's sexiness (naturally, the very definition of "news") Newsday Web editors wrote "Hugh Jackman is Ocar's sexiest host." In an e-mail message, the anonymous reader wrote, "Oh, really? Who the hell is Ocar?"


Given that on Sunday Hugh Jackman will host the 81st Annual Academy Awards show, there's no doubt the editors made an attempt, however feeble, at "Oscar," the popular nickname for the Academy Award of Merit. The derivation of the Oscar nickname is up for debate. But who the hell is Ocar?

Either a bunch of California realtors, a high-ranking military office or an anarchist radio station. OCAR is the acronym used to refer to the Orange County Association of Realtors, the Office of the Chief, Army Reserve and Orange County Anarchist Radio, a "truely independent" Internet radio station based in Califorinia. Yep, the radio station may be independent of corporate America, but it's not free of spelling mistakes. That "truely independent" is their mistake, featured in the logo on its Web site, not the Proofreader's (click the link above to check it out). Also, there's no evidence that the radio station is affiliated in any way with the realtors. One thing we do know, though, is that Ocar is in no way affiliated with Hugh Jackman or The Academy Awards. Duh, Newsday should have known this too.

The Proofreader thanks the anonymous reader for submitting the mistake.