As many of you probably noticed, there were a few serious errors in Tuesday’s issue of The Jambar. First and foremost, the misspelling of former Youngstown State University running back Jamaine Cook’s last name in our teaser section just beneath our masthead. Second, the nonsense subhead on our lead story titled “Energy is Money” and third, our use of the wrong last name when referring to head equipment manager Alvy Armstrong.
The first error is clearly the most noticeable and possibly the most offensive error that has been made in our time working for The Jambar. For those of you that were unable to read Tuesday’s newspaper, in our teaser for an article detailing Cook’s return to YSU after spending part of the summer playing for the Cleveland Browns, Cook’s last name was spelled with a “c” in place of the second “o.”
We would like to issue a personal apology to Mr. Cook, his teammates both here at YSU and professionally and to the entire YSU athletic department.
What happened is unforgivable and should never have happened. There is no way for us to truly state how sorry we are that such a word was used in the first place and that its use was not noticed by our staff in the editing process.
The subhead in our lead story on Tuesday ran as “YSU’s tightTight budget gives wayleads to energy.” It should have read, “YSU’s tight budget leads to energy conservation.”
Again, this is an error that should not have been made in the first place, and we are sorry that it made into the final paper that you all saw on Tuesday.
The third major error was using the wrong last name for head equipment manager Alvy Armstrong. In the paper, we printed Armstrong’s last name as Johnson.
We would like to issue a personal apology to Mr. Armstrong, his coworkers and the entire YSU athletic department.
This mistake should not have been made and it is entirely our fault for not catching in the production and editing process.
As you have read three times before, we are truly and sincerely sorry for the errors in our previous newspaper, both to the people who were the subject of these errors and to the those of you that were offended by our use of such language and by our lack of responsibility to fix these errors before they were finalized and out of our control.
As a newspaper, we have an inherent trust between ourselves and our readers, and that trust was violated Tuesday by these errors. We have taken action, and we can assure you that we will do everything in our power to make sure that mistakes like these never happen again.
We would like to issue one final apology to Mr. Cook, Mr. Armstrong, the YSU athletic department and to our readers. These mistakes should never have happened.
Plain and simple, we f—ed up.
