Was reminded about this item from fictional news site Newsweek.com. This really happened and they had to recall 125,000 copies which had been  distributed nationwide. You can find copies today on Amazon or EBay. Newsweek blamed a subcontractor saying they had printed two separate editions in order to be prepared but their vendor shipped the wrong one.

Was reminded of this episode by others who note the similarity to their pre-written and published Thanksgiving Day story that was all fiction.

A lot of “news” is reporting on “current events” is actually written in advance by creative writing teams. Readers are not informed about the creative writing unless they catch obvious errors.

Newsweek has a history. Online there are reports said to be from insiders saying that when Newsweek was acquired by IBT in 2013, it was turned into a click-bait tabloid operation intended to create social media outrage. Even Slate says “Newsweek has collapsed“.

The way to respond to accusations of fictional news reporting is to double down on accuracy, objectivity and remaining calm. Unfortunately, the news industry continues to harm itself through self destructive behavior typical of middle school drama, such as this fiasco from the NY Times.

(Note – this post is about Newsweek’s history of misreporting. I do not belong to a political party and did not vote for Trump or Clinton.)