The Corrections on NYT's Latest Williamsburg Trend Piece Are Delicious
Hope you're hungry for schadenfreude, because The New York Times's recent Thursday styles piece on "Will.i.amsburg" was not only laughable, it was incorrect. And somehow, so are the corrections. The piece, if you missed it, involves the first person account of a middle-aged man "decided to embed" in the strange, sometimes frightening land of the hipsters: Williamsburg, Brooklyn. The sheer intensity of ridicule lit Twitter ablaze — the headline, "Will.i.amsburg," really was too much — and at some point on Thursday, The Times changed the headline to the still laughable "How I Become a Hipster."
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A day after the piece hit the web, the corrections arrived. The first one, well, could be an honest mistake. It also draws attention to the fact that Henry Alford, the author of the piece, is a humorist and is treating his subject matter with a fair bit of satire. This does not mean his jokes are funny — though, if his, the phrase "gathered in Brooklyn" is pretty cheeky. The correction:
An earlier version of this article referred incorrectly to the products sold at By Brooklyn. The store does not sell dandelion and burdock soda, lovage soda syrup, and Early Bird granola “gathered in Brooklyn.”
The second one, referencing the main vein of Williamsburg, likely the only street name in the neighborhood most Manhattanites would recognize. Evidently, The Times isn't too familiar, despite the fact that its published countless trend pieces that take place here:
An earlier version also referred incorrectly to the thoroughfare that contains the thrift shop Vice Versa. It is Bedfoprd Avenue, not Bedford Street.
In case you missed that correction needed on the correction, it's the phrase "Bedfoprd Avenue." Not an actual street, and obviously a type. It's Bedford Avenue. The error had been live for about an hour at the time of writing.
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But you know what? At the end of the day, The New York Times is in the media business, where traffic is a currency of its own. So despite the grief, the Gray Lady took to Twitter late Thursday to make the best humblebrag we've ever seen a Times account make:
Read the most-emailed, most-ridiculed article on @nytimes today: Will.i.amsburg nyti.ms/18uQp5N
— NYT Metro Desk(@NYTMetro) May 2, 2013
