The Stuff Up

The Press, had a big stuff up yesterday when they prematurely published on Stuff a story announcing a verdict in the Weatherston trial. It was only up for a few minutes, but was cached by Google and seen by many on Twitter.

I won’t say what verdict they announced, until after we get the actual verdict.

It is no surprise a newspaper works on stories in advance of a verdict. I am sure they had one for the other possible verdict also.

What was more surprising was they already had comments from friends of both the victim and the killer. To be fair, the comments were not a reaction to a verdict yet to be delivered, but if you were reading the story you could assume they were made after the verdict.

Google Cache is a wonderful tool, but very unforgiving. It can capture for days or even weeks a story that was only accessible for a few minutes.

UPDATE: Weatherston has been found guilty, which is what the Press story yesterday said. The story run yesterday is almost identical to this one now appearing.