AFTER DEADLINE
With flubs, when it rains, it pours

By Anne Harpham

For many dedicated crossword puzzlers, their day doesn't start right without the mental challenge of solving the New York Times crossword.

So we ruined the day for more than a few readers last Wednesday when they discovered the clues didn't match the grid. The New York Times puzzle can be tough enough without that added twist.

It was human error, and it was our error. In assembling the Coffee Break page, a page designer imported the grid for the other crossword puzzle on the page and put it where the New York Times puzzle grid should have been.

There is a process in place to catch that type of error, but we didn't follow through. A proofreader is supposed to check the numbers with the clues and the grid boxes and make sure they match.

We do take the puzzles seriously and apologize to those who were inconvenienced.

Last Sunday, we published a story in the Island Life section about the first Hawai'i Arts Season along with the season's calendar. We have since published eight corrections to the calendar and two involving the story.

We had good intentions when we decided to spotlight the arts season, which is being promoted by the Hawai'i Tourism Authority and Hawai'i Consortium for the Arts, along with a variety of arts organizations across the state.

However, we erred when we drew information from a calendar compiled from a variety of sources and posted online by the sponsoring organizations. Details about several events, including contact information, had changed and some of the events had been canceled after the calender was posted.

The Advertiser has high standards for accuracy, and those standards require that we check each piece of information used, in calendar listings or elsewhere. By not making those checks, we didn't live up to our standards. We've rectified that by putting the calendar though a fact-checking process and are rerunning the listings in our Island Life section today.

A number of readers called Tuesday wondering how they could vote in that day's Democratic Party preference poll, or caucus, in Hawai'i. Some were surprised, and many were upset there was nothing in the paper that day about the caucus, where they could vote or about the balloting procedure.

Only registered Democrats could vote in the preference poll, but the party allowed people to register at the door of polling sites that night and vote.

In past presidential election years, the Hawai'i caucuses have generated little interest or attention. However, the party moved the caucus up a week this year hoping to garner more attention, and it worked.

Hawai'i's process did not generate much interest from the front-running candidates, but it's our duty to provide information to those readers who wanted to take part in the process. We were able to include information in our PM edition. But we let down many of our readers.

And finally, Tuesday's front page and sports cover page had a certain gray look to them thanks to the absence of color.

A problem with the distribution of ink on one unit of one of our presses could not be fixed in time for the start of the morning-edition press run.

Because press crews could not stop the unit from over-inking the page, plates had to be moved to another unit on the press, a unit that did not have color capability.

Senior editor Anne Harpham is The Advertiser's reader representative. Reach her at 525-8033 or aharpham@honoluluadvertiser.com.