Charles Apple

Denis Finley, editor of the Virginian-Pilot, wrote a page-one column today in which he apologized for reversing the score of the Super Bowl in Monday’s paper:

Finley writes:

How could this happen? Many of you asked that question Mon day in e-mails and phone calls to The Pilot. No, the sports department is not filled with Indianapolis Colts fans. Yes, we proof the paper. No, we did not have a Super Bowl party here.

It was, as simply as I can put it, human error. It’s hard to believe we can make a mistake like this when at least a half-dozen veteran journalists were involved in producing Monday’s Sports section. It’s hard to believe we can mess up what is arguably the biggest sporting event of the year, but we did.

I’ll also note that my old friend Denis felt compelled to forgo his usual smiling mug shot for one that seemed a little more somber:

Find the entire column online here.

In case you missed it yesterday, yes, the Pilot got the scores reversed on Monday’s sports front:

The error is in orange, just beneath the headline:

The Pilot got it right on Monday’s page one…

…but Denis reports it was also wrong on page nine of sports. I missed that one. And I’ve already thrown out my paper, dammit.

I zipped into downtown Norfolk for a lunch reunion Wednesday with two of my Virginian-Pilot staffers, Miranda Mulligan and Bob Voros.

Despite the fact that we’ve stayed in the area, I’ve not seen Miranda since I left the Pilot 14 months ago. I’ve seen Bob only once since then. However, I’ve been in constant e-mail and Facebook contact with them both.

And the fries at Five Guys can’t be beat, of course.

Apparently, it was payday for Landmark employees (below, right).

It was great seeing Bob and Miranda again. I really need to do this more often.

What a delight to open my Virginian-Pilot this morning to find this masterpiece by Buddy Moore:

That’s a fabulous photo, designed with a little interaction with the page nameplate. A terrific headline (including a pun — you guys know what a sucker I am for puns). Two wonderful pullouts down low, including one on the history of perfect games and another on the incredible outfield catch by Dewayne Wise to preserve the win (and yet another pun in the text).

And even the ad across the bottom wasn’t ugly today!

Like a lot of people, we’re in love with this pitch-by-pitch diagram masterminded by Steve Layton of the Chicago Tribune:

The Tribune’s Josh Crutchmer writes at SportsDesigner:

There were about four of us who had the same reaction as soon as the 27th out went up on the board: “Every pitch, to every batter, with every result, no cutting corners.”

Steve Layton, our senior graphics artist, immediately started building a shell, and Chad Yoder and Jonathon Berlin started pulling the data. My role was to give Steve the space to pull it off and make the rest of the page work.

Once we got the data and players oriented correctly, the design was rather repetitive and tedious. One of those deadline graphics made possible by a 1 p.m. game instead of a 7 p.m. game. Steve’s total time spent getting it all right was 6-7 hours.

I’m a little partial to the tab version, because the color adds a lot, in my opinion.

Steve’s work is fabulous — always has been, really. Working with him and observing his sports graphic work was one of the big highlights of my three years at the Tribune in the late 1990s.

You can see a bunch of perfect game sports fronts, A1 pages and graphics at SportsDesigner. Check it out here.