Focus: That Famous Oops

It's the 65th anniversary of that "Dewey Defeats Truman" headline, so I thought it might be fun to walk readers through the perfect storm of bad assumptions, ignorance and business conditions that led to possibly the most famous bad page-one headline in history. In those days, pollsters were so confident of their numbers, they stopped polling in September. The idea of late surge was unheard of. Another interesting thing: The Tribune was hit by a strike by the typesetters union. Part of the lead story on that page, in fact, is set upside-down. And Truman holds aloft the early edition of the Trib. Later that night, the Tribune remade the headline, changing from "Dewey Defeats Truman" to "G.O.P. Wins White House!" Gee. That's MUCH better. Nov. 4, 2013.

Read more…
E-mail me when people leave their comments –

You need to be a member of NewsPageDesigner to add comments!

Join NewsPageDesigner