A Front Page “Boo-boo”

WATER VALLEY – Everyone knows taxes are sticky business and a decision by supervisors to pass a general obligation bond in District Three last week was bound to raise a few eyebrows.

    The story reported that District Three Supervisor Butch Surrette was in favor of passing a new bond to fund road and bridge improvements. The bond would just affect District Three taxpayers, and comes after a similar 1992 bond was paid off months earlier.

    The story was accurate enough, but a slight problem in the headline had District Five Supervisors Bubba Tillman on the phone first thing Wednesday morning.

    The headline, Beat Five Bond Is The ‘Right Thing’, mistakenly listed Tillman’s District instead of Surrette’s District.

    “I already had one person call me mad,” a congenial Tillman told me at 8:03 Wednesday morning. “You got to run a  correction.”

    In the newspaper business we all know that once a paper is printed and mailed, there is nothing you can do to right a wrong until the next paper is published.

    “No problem,” was the quick answer to Tillman’s request. I also agreed to publish the correction in a prominent place in the paper, which was where the original story appeared. All too often newspapers bury corrections in the inside of the paper – we would not be guilty of that this time.