In reporting Monday that long-shot Democratic presidential candidate Lawrence Lessig had bowed out of the race, the New York Times managed to misspell his name three times, serving as a likely unintended but harsh indictment on the inconsequentiality of his extremely brief run for office.
Lessig’s name was misspelled in the title to a video included in the Times article. His name was also misspelled in a photo caption, as well as in the story’s opening sentence.
The Times also misreported the month in which Lessig formally launched his campaign.
In super gut punch, @nytimes announces @lessig departure by spelling name wrong 3/5 times. pic.twitter.com/ryk5dBrLiN
— sLurie (@luriethereal) November 2, 2015
Lessig, a Harvard professor, said Monday in a video posted to his YouTube page, “No doubt a better candidate could have gone further, though I doubt anyone could have worked harder, but regardless, I must today end my campaign for the Democratic nomination and turn to the question of how to best to continue to press for this reform now.”
“From the start it was clear that getting into the Democratic debates was the essential step in this campaign,” he added. “I may be known in tiny corners of the tubes of the Internets, but I am not well-known to the American public generally.”
Lessig did not qualify to participate in the first Democratic primary debate, which was hosted by CNN.
The Times reported, “Despite being able to raise over $1 million before Labor Day, and spending nearly half of it, Mr. Lessig had been struggling to get noticed anywhere on the campaign trail — he wasn’t offered an invitation to speak at annual Jefferson-Jackson Dinner in Iowa last month, either.”
The Times story has since been updated to include two notes of correction.
The first reads, “Because of an editing error, an earlier version of this article misspelled the surname of a candidate who dropped out of the Democratic presidential race on Monday. He is Lawrence Lessig, not Lessing. The error was repeated in a title and a caption of an accompanying video.”
The second correction reads, “An earlier version of this article misstated the month that Lawrence Lessig entered the Democratic nominating contest. He began his campaign in September, not in August. The error was repeated in a summary accompanying the article.”
