By: A Connecticut newspaper has apologized and fired a copy editor who put an offensive caption on its Web page under a photo of a girls' high school soccer team.
The Immaculate High School girls' team was celebrating a goal scored in a championship-clinching win Nov. 5. The newspaper's Web site published a photograph of the jubilant team, but said it was celebrating a teammate's decision to "come out of the closet as a lesbian."
"It was a flagrant, awful violation of every journalistic principle," said Paul Steinmetz, editor of the Danbury News-Times. "It's just embarrassing to us and untenable."
The copy editor, who was not identified, was "goofing around" and didn't realize the caption had gone online, Steinmetz said.
The bogus caption stayed on the Web page for a few hours on Sunday and received a few hundred hits, Steinmetz said. "We couldn't get it off the Web site as fast as we wanted to," he said.
The newspaper, which has a circulation of about 33,000 in western Connecticut, is training more employees to administer its Web site so future errors can be fixed promptly, Steinmetz said.
Although the caption appeared only on the Web site, the newspaper apologized both online and in its print edition. The paper also met with the family and school officials and wrote a letter of apology to the soccer team, Steinmetz said.
Calls seeking comment were left Friday with school officials.
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