Dewey Defeats Truman - En Espanol

This is a headline from the Los Angeles Spanish daily, La Opinion. It was published on Thursday, Feb. 4. It reads "Concejo municipal aprueba despidos" or "City council approves layoffs" (below a picture of three firefighters). Except that it didn't. I was covering this story last Thursday, one of the three days that the Council meets in Los Angeles. Since that Tuesday we were hearing that the city needed to layoff about a thousand workers. By Wednesday, it was almost certain that they wouldn't reach an agreement and announce the cuts. But by late Wednesday, the council agreed to postpone a decision for 30 days. Of course, by that time, La Opinion press deadline had passed and published the embarrassing headline - a la "Dewey Defeats Truman". I haven't talk to the reporter since then, so I don't exactly know what happened. A few comments... first, it's inexcusable for a paper to run a story that did NOT occur. That's basic journalism. Very sloppy. But it also reflects the challenges that newspapers are facing and why their business model is broken. Because they have a strict deadline, local newspaper reporters have to finish a story earlier that most TV reporters working for the 11pm newscast. The whole process of going to press is time consuming and there's no way to correct something once is printed on paper (something you can easily do on line). No wonder people are rushing to the web to get the news.
I was having breakfast this morning and there were a few copies of the LA Times available for the costumers. Only two older gentleman were reading the paper. It seems, that even when it's free, a lot of people will not read a paper anymore.