'Union-Trib' Hit By Embarrassment Of Glitches

By: Wayne Robins Editor's note: Following is a corrected version of a story that ran both online and in the March 25 issue of E&P.

The San Diego Union-Tribune suffered an embarrassment of glitches when a four-letter word materialized in a column by Buddy Blue, a free-lance writer for the paper's "Night & Day" entertainment section.

A layout designer, who may now wish for a career as a coal porter, didn't understand the "stet" applied to Blue's phrase "pooh-butt" and thought it was a misspelling of a tragically appropriate expletive -- which was inserted as a substitute.

The alternative weekly San Diego Reader said 25,000 copies of "Night & Day" hit the street before the stuff hit the fan, halting the presses. A Union-Tribune representative, however, has told E&P that "none of the copies ... left the building. [They] were isolated and destroyed, and the press run simply extended to replace them."

"I give them credit for even allowing a column such as mine to run in the paper," Buddy Seigal, aka Buddy Blue, said in an interview with E&P. Seigal also writes a boxing column for the weekly La Jolla Light.