Perils of Late-Night Punning

Early this morning, I went to ESPN to read about the Timberwolves’ victory over the Houston Rockets last night. The lead headline on ESPN mobile was curious: Editor’s Note: Apology For Offensive Headline. But the story itself was less than illuminating:

Last night, ESPN.com’s mobile web site posted an offensive headline referencing Jeremy Lin at 2:30 am. The headline was removed at 3:05 am. We are conducting a complete review of our cross-platform editorial procedures and are determining appropriate disciplinary action to ensure this does not happen again. We regret and apologize for this mistake.

Naturally, I couldn’t resist investigating further. A quick Google search explained the apology:

ESPN put together a Knicks-Hornets recap Friday and as they invoked Jeremy Lin’s performance in the headline, they made a mental error of fairly epic proportions.

Here is the screen shot:

I draw no particular moral from this, except perhaps that no one should try to do anything at 2:30 in the morning, least of all write punning headlines.

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