Oops. Trib did it again

Wow. Another* embarrassing screw up at The Salt Lake Tribune Monday.

Peg McEntee took Gov. Gary Herbert down a peg or two with a systematic attack on the empty platitudes in the Guv’s inauguration speech. Her column was headlined: “McEntee: Hey, governor, hollow rhetoric won’t heal Utah’s ills”.

Unfortuantely, McEntee eschewed actually attending Herbert’s speech Monday. Instead, she relied on a printed text she found somewhere. Because she didn’t go to the event or, apparently, watch it on TV or follow it on Twitter, she and her editors didn’t learn until after her column was published online that she had somehow based her attack on Herbert’s 2011 speech.

Oops.

By evening, McEntee’s column was pulled, but it still exists here (unless it’s been scraped off) with a correction and probably will live on for centuries elsewhere on the Interwebs.

Of course, journalists, like lesser mortals, make mistakes all the time. The integrity test is how you respond and tidy up later.

A couple questions:

— Will the Trib post a prominent correction or explanation of the F’up on its website where people can find it? (Maybe it’s there, but SLTrib’s website is such a mess I sure can’t find it.)

— Or will the old souls at the Trib pretend that publication online does not really count?

— Will the Trib apologize to Herbert for mocking him with something he said two years ago? The Guv’s office says no one at the Trib has “reached out” to them.

— What will Herbert’s staff say to the next Trib reporter they see? Especially considering the full column continues to mock the Guv on SLTrib.com–with the addition of a lame correction.

*I’m referring of course, to the screwed up poll results in November.