They say never meet your heroes. Just ask New York Times Metro Editor Wendell Jamieson.
Elvis Costello is Jamieson’s idol. He wants us to know this by writing a piece headlined, ‘A Dream Come True: Metro Editor Meets Lifelong Hero, Elvis Costello,’ in which he painstakingly outlines his love for the English singer-songwriter who he calls his ‘lifelong hero.’ The article accompanies Jamieson’s interview of Costello.
Jamieson — who looks like how I would imagine unhinged banker Patrick Bateman from American Psycho would, should he exist outside the mind of Bret Easton Ellis — got so carried away interviewing his idol, he made four- FOUR!- mistakes in his piece. The errors are eye-popping even by the consistent output of corrections generated by the Times which seems to increasingly regard its fact deviations as a badge of honor.
The correction in full reads:
An earlier version of this article misspelled the given name of Elvis Costello’s wife. She is Diana Krall, not Dianna. The article also misstated the festival that Mr. Costello played in July. It was the Newport Folk Festival, not the Newport Jazz Festival. The article also misstated the location of the Algonquin Hotel in Manhattan. It is on West 44th Street, not West 43rd Street. The article also misspelled the surname of the bass player for Mr. Costello’s band, the Imposters. He is Davey Faragher, not Farragher.
Costello and his other devoted fans are particularly likely to be unimpressed that Jamieson spelled his wife’s name wrong and that the Times Metro Editor didn’t know where the iconic Algonquin Hotel was located.
Perhaps unwisely, Jamieson then sought to excuse his errors on the grounds that his mind, while writing the piece, was on editing coverage relating to last week’s terrorism in New Jersey:
@jonbern running the coverage of last week’s bombing cut into my fact checking, but the sad truth is… those may have slipped by anyway…
— Wendell Jamieson (@Wendo20) September 29, 2016
It’s the latest embarrassment for the Gray Lady which has been under immense financial, editorial, and personnel pressures.
Jamieson still has some way to go before he eclipses Alessandra Stanley, the Times corrections champ — once dubbed by Gawker “America’s Wrongest Television Critic.” But it’s a good start nonetheless.
