Misspelling Blagojevich Week: 9th Circle of Hell

Finally, Misspelling Blagojevich Week comes to an end. It's been a long and taxing week, nine days, not including the MLK holiday which was observed here. In fact, the series of posts became a burden for the Proofreader and resembled something like Dante's nine circles of hell. With that in mind, let's descend into the ninth and, thankfully, last circle of Blagojevich hell.

Today's Blagojevich bungling was found in a short item on the Web site of USA Today, posted on January 5th, 2009. The article is actually the opening of an article published on Reason Online, the companion to Reason magazine. In the article's third line, the Illinois governor's last name is spelled "Blogojevich's," in its possessive form, as you can see highlighted in the screen shots above and below. This blunder is a tag-team mistake, made by the editors at Reason and then also missed by editors at USA Today. Thus ends Misspelling Blagojevich Week here on the blog, though there are probably many other repeats of this mistake out there. Tomorrow we will return to regular programming. There are plenty more printed mistakes that shouldn't have been made in the queue.

Misspelling Blagojevich Week: 8th Circle of Hell

Wait, it's been seven days! How long can this week go on? Too long. Probably all month and maybe next month, too. Nevertheless, we soldier on into the eighth circle of hell here in Misspelling Blagojevich Week. The blunders were many, but, finally, an end is in sight. Till then, behold today's misspelling, found in an Associated Press article on Yahoo! News and countless other Web sites.


The mistake appears twice in the third and fifth graphs of an article dated January 7, 2009, as you can see highlighted in the screen shot above. This story was syndicated to numerous newspapers and Web sites around the country, as you can see from this search of the article's title. Interestingly, Yahoo! News editors, along with many others, eventually caught and corrected the gaffe. However, other news sources weren't as thorough (or lucky) and the mistakes still live in many places, such as here on the Web site of the Chicago Sun-Times, as you can see in the screen shot below, and on the Web site of ABC 13, the local news station in Houston.

The prevalence of this mistake is staggering, since it's probably not a typo. The A and O keys are situated at opposite ends of the keyboard. Equally as staggering is the apparent lack of knowledge regarding how to correctly spell Blagojevich among professional copy editors and proofreaders. Ah, he's been at the center of one of the biggest political scandals in years. They shouldn't be making this mistake.

Misspelling Blagojevich Week: 6th & 7th Circles of Hell

Due to technical difficulties (read: real work), Misspelling Blagojevich Week was offline yesterday, but it's back in full force today, with a double entry or the sixth and seventh circles of hell, as it's become for the Proofreader. The onslaught of Blagojevich blunders continues with mistakes made at professional blogs The Huffington Post and The Daily Kos. Politics is supposed to be the specialty of these two online pubs, but that doesn't give them immunity to this mistake that's been made far and wide, by big and small, by print and online publications, by left-wing and right-wing.

The above screen shot of a December 18 post titled "We Need a Good Obama Speech. Now." features a Blagojevich bungling in the first line of the third paragraph, as you can see highlighted above. Perhaps "We Need a Good Proofreader. Now." would have been a more apropos title for this post.

Below, The Daily Kos misspelled Blagojevich in the headline of an article lengthily titled, "If we can put Blogojevich aside for a moment, how is Obama doing?" as you can see highlighted in the screen shot. Who is Blogojevich anyway? All the news sources that have made and will make this mistake are really just making up news, because, technically, no one by the name of "Blogojevich" exists. Or at least no one that's been governor of Illinois.

Misspelling Blagojevich Week: Day 5

After a brief hiatus yesterday, Misspelling Blagojevich Week returns and trudges on for day five, which feels more like the fifth circle of hell than the fifth installment in a series of blog posts. The Proofreader gravely underestimated the task of coming up with something interesting or witty to say about professional journalists misspelling the last name of Illinois' impeached governor for an entire week. Plus, the Proofreader is too busy toiling on other duties today to write something decently thought out.

So, here is today's Blagojevich blunder coming to you courtesy of The Washington Post and Newsweek (a repeat offender here). It occurs in a 2007 post on an odd blog called "On Faith." Scan down to the sixth line of the second graph and the misspelling is highlighted for your viewing convenience.

In fairness, this mistake was made way back in 2007, long before Blagojevich's name was a household one. Nevertheless, with the combined resources of the two publications being so vast, someone should have noticed and corrected the mistake by now.

Misspelling Blagojevich Week: Day 4

Another day, another misspelling of Blagojevich. Hence the name of Misspelling Blagojevich Week here on the blog. While yesterday's example of the mistake came from a media giant (and a repeat offender), today's example comes to you courtesy of a little guy in the world of newspapers, The Lakeland Ledger in Florida.

As you can see, highlighted in the screen shot above, the impeached governor's last name is misspelled "Blogojevich" in the headline of an A.P. article dated January 9th. Interestingly, you'll notice, the editors took the time to supply readers with a phonetic pronunciation of Blagojevich's cumbersome last name right next to a correct spelling of the name in the article's opening line, but neglected to take the time to double-check that the name was spelled accurately in the headline. That's unbelievable.

Most likely, this is not an A.P. mistake as the name is spelled correctly throughout the body of the article. Probably, whichever Lakeland Ledger staff member wrote the headline made the error. To the paper's credit, however, they did correct the mistake. But it's still a blunder that should have never been published online.

Misspelling Blagojevich Week: Day 3

Misspelling Blagojevich Week, appearing like it might be a very long week, marches on and today's butchering of Blagojevich comes to you courtesy of a repeat offender. CBS News. While they may have an eye for a logo over at CBS, they certainly lack an eye for catching misspellings of Blagojevich. Yesterday we saw the mistake made at a media Lilliputian, today we have the same exact mistake from a media giant.
In a January 6th posting on the CBS News blog "Political Hotsheet" the last name of Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich is misspelled "Blogojevich," in its possessive form. If you haven't already, adjust your gaze to the first word of the post's fifth line and you'll see the mistake, highlighted in the screen shot above, of course, for your viewing convenience. CBS also made the same mistake a couple of times back in December of 2008. New Year, same mistake.

Misspelling Blagojevich Week: Day 2

Yesterday a Blagojevich bungling from a well-known newspaper was pointed out; today we have a bungling from a lesser-known paper. Takeaway: this mistake doesn't discriminate. It's made by big and small. Also, in both cases, they are mistakes that never should've been made by pro journalists.


Today's mistake is courtesy of North Denver News, a community newspaper with, according to an "editor's note" on its Web site, about 35,000 readers. The misspelling occurs both in the headline and the first line of the body of an article dated January 4, 2009 on the North Denver News Web site, as you can see highlighted in the screen shot above. In the second line of the article, Blagojevich is spelled correctly, which means this is likely an example of sloppy writing and bad proofreading. Granted, this paper is one step above a student newspaper, but with just one issue to publish a month, there's no excuse for a lapse like this to occur online. Not even the the thin air of the Mile-high City.

But, as the old saying goes, excuses are like asses; everybody's got one. In an e-mail message, the editor of North Denver News states the mistake's origin is not at North Denver News, but V.O.A., the wire service that fed North Denver News the story. According to the editor, North Denver News staff can't correct the blunder; only V.O.A. can. However, North Denver News, upon noticing the error, could have a) notified V.O.A. of the error or, b) not run the faulty story on its Web site. However, neither happened and an inaccurate news item remained published on the North Denver News Web site for at least six days.

Misspelling Blagojevich Week: Day 1

The rampant misspelling of Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich's last name has been pointed out on this blog before, and now, another misspelling of his name in the Newark Star-Ledger has surfaced, which, in turn, triggered another search for more occurrences of the same mistake. And, lo and behold, many more publications, big and small, have made the blunder also. In fact, too many for one blog post. Therefore, today is day one of Misspelling Blagojevich Week here, during which the butchering of Blagojevich's last name by a different news organization will be pointed out each day. So without further delay, let's get to the first Blagojevich bungling.

In a Star-Ledger editorial dated January 8, 2009 (and ironically titled "Roland Burris: a bungled deal"), the now-impeached governor's name is spelled "Blogojevich" twice in the same paragraph. Direct your attention to line two of graph six and you will see both misspellings. The examples are highlighted, as usual, in the screen shot below.


This error is particularly embarrassing given that it was made by the editorial board (editorial boards are typically comprised of some of the top, most influential brass at a newspaper), editorials are commonly written by multiple people and reviewed by multiple other people and, about a month ago, the same editorial board managed to spell Blagojevich's name right in this editorial. How'd they suddenly forget the correct spelling? It's hard to speculate, but by January 8th, their New Year's Eve hangovers should have been well in the past, so being drunk the night (or even two nights) before isn't an excuse. And the error raises this rhetorical question: if The Star-Ledger editorial board can't even spell Illinois' governor's last name right, what merit does their opinion really have?

Worse still for The Star-Ledger, this mistake likely made it into the printed edition of the paper, which the Proofreader has not been able to obtain. If anyone has it, please retrieve it from your recycling bin and contact the Proofreader.

Come back tomorrow to see what other publications have erred too. It's going to be a great week!