After who really won the presidential election, the most pressing question for some embarrassed newspaper editors Wednesday morning was: Who else got it wrong?
The very confusion that prompted Vice President Al Gore to concede victory to Gov. George W. Bush around 12:30 a.m. MST Wednesday inspired countless newspapers to go to press with headlines erroneously declaring that outcome. "BUSH WINS A THRILLER," said the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.
But just as quickly as Gore recanted his concession a short time later, the Post-Dispatch and many other newspapers revised subsequent editions to announce that a Florida recount would be necessary to determine the winner.
The embarrassment didn't approach the depths associated with the infamous "Dewey Defeats Truman" headline that humiliated the Chicago Daily Tribune in 1948, because in this case the confusion was so thick that even Gore made a wrong call. And unlike Dewey, Bush still has a strong shot at proving the headlines right.
But the very quality that can make newspapers appealing and even collectible — their frameable permanence — can leave editors wincing following the publication of even a few inaccurate copies. "It's embarrassing," said Jerry Roberts, managing editor of the San Francisco Chronicle ("BUSH WINS IT").
The erroneous headlines appeared most commonly in newspapers that had the ability to push deadlines deep into the night — an ability that is typically envied in the industry. No copy of The Wall Street Journal declared a winner — because of a combination of "scintillating judgment and early deadlines," joked Paul E. Steiger, the Journal's managing editor.
By contrast, newspapers that had gone to great lengths to lengthen their deadlines found that that effort — taken in the pursuit of accuracy — came back to haunt them. "The irony is that had we not pushed deadlines later," no wrong headline would have been published, said Arnie Robbins, managing editor of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. "We got caught right in a no man's land, somewhere between a nightmare and a bad dream."
Misguided headlines appeared on some of the nation's most prestigious newspapers. "BUSH APPEARS TO DEFEAT GORE," said 115,000 copies of the New York Times, above a story that began: "George Walker Bush was elected the 43rd president of the United States yesterday by one of the tightest margins in history . . . ." Inside, the lead editorial bore the headline: "George W. Bush's Moment."
Other papers got it wrong in their online editions. For less than an hour, the Washington Post Web site said that Bush had won, says Douglas Feaver, executive editor of washingtonpost.com. The Journal's Web site ran a headline saying Bush had won, though the story attributed the victory declaration to the networks.
In correcting erroneous print editions, some papers not only rewrote headlines to reflect the uncertain outcome but also apologized for the inaccuracy of earlier copies. "Several thousand copies of the Chronicle mistakenly reported that Texas Gov. George Bush had clinched the election for the president," said the late Wednesday editions of the San Francisco Chronicle. About 20,000 copies of the Chronicle bore the wrong news, but only a few thousand of those actually made it to front lawns.
The San Jose Mercury News, which competes with the Chronicle, ran its own front-page note, correcting a back-page graphic and two stories inside the paper declaring Bush victorious in Florida.
It isn't as though papers rushed to declare a winner. Miami Herald editors waited until nearly 95 percent of the vote was in and the scales had tipped in Bush's favor before publishing a "Bush Wins It" headline, said Mark Seibel, an assistant managing editor.
After publishing that headline, Herald editors monitoring the Florida secretary of state's Web site watched the Bush lead erode from 126,000 to barely 1,000.
"That's when we said, OK, we have a problem here,'" Seibel said. The paper stopped the presses to correct the story, but 60,000 copies had already been printed.
In Mr. Bush's home city of Austin, American-Statesman editors initially vowed not to declare any victor until the Associated Press did so. As it turned out, AP editors stood apart for their refusal to declare a victor. But back in Austin, "we departed from the plan," recalls Fred Zipp, the managing editor. "We let the adrenalin and the urge to update the paper as quickly as possible take over."
The American-Statesman published 59,000 copies of an edition headlined: "Bush!" Only a few hundred left the building, and readers wished more had. Throughout the day Wednesday, they besieged the paper with requests for the "Bush!" edition. Within hours, a listing on eBay, the on-line auction site, offered one of those copies for $1,000.