Oops just doesn't cut it. Parade prints interview as though Bhutto wasn't dead

Every editor of a print publication lives in fear of being overtaken by events; this is what happened to the editors of Parade magazine which distributed the 32 million copies of its January 6 issue throughout the United States (71 million readers) to more than 400 Sunday newspapers.

Only trouble was that the cover story was on an interview with Benazir Bhutto and she was assassinated in Pakistan after the magazines had been shipped.

Parade is one of the last of the "roto" weekly magazines (Canada no longer has one) and is carried by such papers as The Atlanta Journal & Constitution, The Baltimore Sun, Boston Globe, Chicago Tribune, The Dallas Morning News, Houston Chronicle, Los Angeles Times, The Miami Herald, New York Post, The Philadelphia Inquirer, San Francisco Chronicle, The Seattle Times / Post Intelligencer and The Washington Post.

Despite its ability to update the news on its website and put an explanatory top on the online version of the story (although they did not edit the body of the story to put Ms Bhutto in the past tense) there was a lot of criticism. The Parade website said in an italic lead-in:

After her assassination, Parade immediately posted the entire interview online, and (Contributing Editor and author Gail) Sheehy appeared on network and cable TV news shows to discuss her face-to-face conversations with Bhutto.

Still, readers weren't mollified (and didn't accept excuses about the 10-day lead-time) There were more than 260 comments posted, as steamed-up as the following:

• When I read the Sunday paper this morning I couldn't believe what I saw. There is no mention at all that Bhutto has been killed, it appears as if nothing has happened, and that she is still alive and is going to run in the election in Pakistan. I realize that it was printed early and put in the mail to distributors. But there is a ten day lapse before the date of publication. Surely a disclaimer, like you have done on your website, could have been sent out to all papers in plenty of time. I realize that this would have cost you money, but it has cost your reputation much more.

• Like many of the posters here today, I was stunned that this article made it into the papers today as if Ms. Bhutto's assasination had never happened. I'm not sure who to fault--Parade editors or the editors/management of the local paper that included it. I understand the logisitics in getting this type of circular included in millions of Sunday papers but there must be some way of preventing something like this from happening. Irresponsible, disrepectful, unfortunate.

• I agree with the previous poster...YOU ARE THE MORON. A simple post-it type note could have been created and added to every magazine, OR they could have done the RIGHT thing and yanked the magazine entirely. They could have restructed the article and released it at a later date. It's decisions like this that Editors are supposed to make.

How much worse would the outcry have been had Parade not had a website? The magazine gets a passing grade for trying to mitigate the situation using the web, but possibly because it felt it had made best efforts online, it somehow didn't ensure that the papers that carried the magazine acknowledged the snafu on their front pages before people read the magazine.

The alternative, of course, would have been to yank the issue, But with more than 32 million copies, every publisher and editor can relate to the staggering logistical and financial costs.