THE AUSTRALIAN FINANCIAL newspaper which accidentally published a front-page headline reading “World is Fukt” has apologised to its readers for the error-ridden edition.
The respected Australian Financial Review, in a message from editor-in-chief Michael Stutchbury, said the mistake was due to a production and printing error.
An apology printed in today’s paper said:
The Australian Financial Review apologises to Western Australian readers for the obviously unacceptable state of the newspaper’s front page on Thursday.
The accidental front page quickly found fans on Twitter, who approved of the headline which read in full: “Arms buildup – Buys planes, World is Fukt”.
They also enjoyed the fact that the headline for a story about a major budget speech by Treasurer Joe Hockey was empty of meaning, reading “Three lines to come here”.
Using the hashtag #WorldisFukt, readers described the mistakes as a “tremendously great publishing error” and “journalism that tells it like it is”.
The unusual edition, which was confined to the 16,000 or so copies printed and circulated in Western Australia, is now attracting interest on ebay, with one specimen attracting a bid of Aus$81 (US$75)– well above the edition’s Aus$3.50 cover price.
Stutchbury said the bumper weekend paper beat normal quality control measures and was “an extremely bad result” in Western Australia state.
“It is an extreme one-off and we are going through our processes to make sure it does not happen again,” he said in an email to AFP.
Stutchbury said an investigation was underway to determine what caused the problem for the newspaper, which is part of the Fairfax Media group.
But he said the initial assessment was that production staff in Sydney had accidentally sent a clearly unfinished version of the front page to print sites around the country.
“This error was quickly recognised and the page was recalled from all the print sites. For whatever reason, the recalling of the unfinished page did not succeed at the Perth plant.”
