The more depressing the newspaper business gets, the more entertaining old newsroom stories become.
I had dinner with some ex-colleagues last night and one of them, a former editorial writer, told a story I never tire of hearing. It was the fall of 1978 and the Polish Cardinal Karol Wojtyla had just been chosen to become the next Pope - the first non-Italian Pope in over four centuries. Kingsley, a little too caught up in the historic nature of this appointment, described him in his editorial as "the first non-Catholic Pope."
People were so focused on the "non" that nobody who proofed the page noticed the mistake. Of course, once it was published it caught the attention of many, including the editor. The next day he walked into Kingsley's office - I had not heard this part of the story before - placed the editorial on Kingsley's desk, and uttered the only comment he would ever make about the piece: "This is not an editorial," he said. "This is a news story."
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