NATION : Editor Quits After Joke Sees Print
The city editor of the Philadelphia Daily News has resigned after a joke he inserted into a news release was mistakenly printed, the newspaper announced today.
Tom Opdyke had slipped the joke into an announcement of scholarships being established in memory of the late NBC newswoman Jessica Savitch, who drowned in 1983 when the car in which she was riding plunged into the Delaware Canal.
Opdyke, 36, had electronically inserted a phrase stating that the scholarships in broadcast journalism would also be available to students seeking “college instruction in automobile-escape techniques.”
In an article in today’s Daily News, Editor Zachary Stalberg quoted Opdyke as saying he never intended for the phrase to appear in the newspaper. Opdyke said he had planned to add a notation saying the phrase was not part of the news release, but forgot.
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