AFTER DEADLINE
Sharp-eyed readers saw error we missed
By Anne Harpham
It has been nearly 34 years since Neil Armstrong stepped on the moon. It was a euphoric time for America and its space program. Astronauts were famous and instantly recognizable.
Two of the most famous were the first of the 12 astronauts who walked on the moon, Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin.
Many of us in the newsroom remember those heady days: the moonwalks, Armstrong's first words after the moon landing, the fuzzy pictures beamed back to television sets on Earth and details about the lives of these genuine heroes.
But we were jolted last week by the reality that many of our colleagues weren't even born in 1969 or were too young to pay much attention.
Advertiser library photo • July 20, 1999
So when we mixed up a picture last weekend and ran a photo of Buzz Aldrin and said it was Neil Armstrong, no one who proofed the page picked up on the error. But lots of readers did.
The identities of Buzz Aldrin, left, and Neil Armstrong got mixed up last week when The Advertiser intended to run a photo of Armstrong.
Armstrong has kept himself pretty much out of the public eye since his astronaut days. Indeed, as last week's story in the Sunday Island Life section noted, he declined to be interviewed by the reporter. So, for page designers and copy editors who are more familiar with stories of space shuttles than the Apollo missions, it's not surprising they haven't seen many pictures of Armstrong.
How did we trip up? The photo above is the one that the page designer went to when looking for a photo of Armstrong to use with a Florida Today story on an upcoming biography of Armstrong.
It is a photo of Aldrin, on the left, and Armstrong at a July 20, 1999, ceremony at the Newseum in Arlington, Va. The ceremony marked the 30th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing. The page designer, in her instructions to the photo desk, wrote that Armstrong was on the left. So, the photo desk picked up the image of Aldrin instead of Armstrong. And, through the remaining editing processes, no one caught it.
Obviously, Aldrin is on the left. We may not have noticed it, but the readers who called not only knew the photo wasn't Armstrong, they all knew it was Aldrin.
It's the kind of blooper we hate to make. But each of us comes to the job with different sets of knowledge, framed by our age and experience. Many of those of us in the newsroom who can tell Armstrong and Aldrin apart would fail miserably if asked to identify Gwen Stefani or Amanda Bynes.
Senior editor Anne Harpham is The Advertiser's reader representative. Reach her at aharpham@honoluluadvertiser.com or 525-8033.
