The New York Times created a storm on the campaign trail and in the journalism community with its front-page report on Sen. John McCain’s ties to lobbyists.

McCain denied the main points of the story, including the part where the Times reported that during his 2000 campaign for president, his aides suspected he was having an affair with a female lobbyist and took extreme measures to keep lobbyist from coming anywhere close to the candidate. You can link to the Times story here.

The Advertiser does not subscribe to the New York Times News Service (the Star-Bulletin has exclusive rights in this town). But The Washington Post was apparently working on a similar story and ran theirs when the Times posted its version online. The Post, however, stayed away from the illicit romance angle and strictly looked at McCain’s ties to lobbyists, including people who help run his current campaign.

We ran the Post’s story on Thursday’s A2 along with other campaign stories. Both Editor Mark Platte and I were comfortable with the Post’s version. We felt that the issue was fair game because McCain and his campaign staff have created the image of a candidate who has maintained his independence from special interests and the Washington loybbists who work for them.

The internal debate at the New York Times over how to handle the story is covered by The New Republic. You can link to that story here. Scroll down to the stories for Thursday, Feb. 21.

The furor over the Times story is summed up well by the Los Angeles Times media reporter James Rainey. His story should be posted on the L.A. Times site by early Friday morning.

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I missed this next item when it first happened, but a colleague sent it to me. It reminds me of my biggest goof in the news business. I was working for the Star-Bulletin at the time, about 10 years ago, when both it and The Advertiser shared the same building.

It was in the pre-digital days when pages for the newspaper were pasted together from stories printed on a form of developed film paper. Because the page came out in pieces, the page designer would often leave a placeholder: “Headline goes here.”

As usual, we were running close to deadline as the paste-up team assembled the pieces of Page One and other pages. One story would get pasted on one page, and then another on another page. A picture here and there.

Usually, there were several editors in the backshop overseeing the paste-up, but on that edition I was alone. I hurried from page to page as the clock ticked down and then passed our deadline.

Finally, Page One was ready. Everything was on it. Since we were already late, I gave it one last glance and told the Page One paste-up man to send it. Then I walked back to my desk.

About an hour and a half later I got a call from my boss. The circulation department was calling the delivery trucks back. Several thousand copies of the paper had been printed before someone noticed the main headline on Page One. In letters more than an inch high it said: “Headline goes here.”

Amazingly, I was not fired, though I was the target of many jokes, especially from the Advertiser side of the building. I got my revenge, however. Not much more than a week later, “headline goes here” appeared on A3 of The Advertiser. And all of those copies were delivered to their customers.

Anyway, here is the story that prompted that recollection:

NEW YORK (AP) — NBC News said Tuesday it has reprimanded the employee responsible for mistakenly flashing a picture of Osama bin Laden on MSNBC as Chris Matthews talked about Barack Obama.
“This mistake was inexcusable,” MSNBC spokesman Jeremy Gaines said.
It happened during the opening of “Hardball” Monday evening. Matthews was previewing a story on the controversy over Obama’s use of another politician’s words, and a picture of bin Laden briefly flashed on the screen beside him with the headline “Words About Words.”
The Obama campaign immediately called NBC to complain, and Matthews apologized on the air a few minutes later. When “Hardball” was rerun later that night, a picture of Obama replaced the picture of the terrorist leader.
The mistake was made by someone in the network’s graphics department whom MSNBC would not identify. The network did not explain exactly how the mistake was made nor detail the punishment for the employee.
Obama spokesman Tommy Vietor noted the apology and said the campaign had no other comment.
It’s hardly the first time the presidential candidate and terrorist leader have been confused in the media. CNN apologized last year for promoting a story on the search for bin Laden with the headline, “Where’s Obama?”
One other time, CNN’s Alina Cho reported that “Barack Obama’s campaign has been dogged by false rumors, among them that Osama is a Muslim, Obama rather.”
Even former GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney misspoke on the campaign trail last October when talking about terrorism. “Actually, just look at what Osam, uh, Barack Obama said just yesterday ...”
As long as it’s a slip of the tongue, people should just get over it, said Barbara Wallraff, who writes a syndicated column on language.
“Don’t we have other things to complain about?” she said.
Wallraff noted how changing one letter can also transform “Bush” to “bust” or “lush.” She said the spell-check on one of her computer programs always suggests “Osama” as a substitute when she types “Obama.”
It’s far different if something like this is done intentionally, she said.
This has been a rough month of apologies at MSNBC. Reporter David Shuster was suspended for two weeks for saying that Hillary Rodham Clinton’s campaign had “pimped out” daughter Chelsea by having her make political phone calls. And Matthews apologized last month after suggesting that Clinton’s political prominence was due to her husband’s infidelities.