Dewey Defeats Truman redux? Early edition of Boston Globe had Patriots losing Super Bowl

The Boston Globe regrets the error, no doubt.

The biggest local newspaper covering the New England Patriots also has a worldwide subscription base, and with Super Bowl LI running late into the night — the Patriots trailed the Atlanta Falcons, 28-3, mid-third quarter — it meant putting to bed an early edition of the Globe that reached homes in Florida (and perhaps other locations) with his fateful declaration:

Truly the most #fakenews moment of 2017 in sports, eh? Steve Harvey probably loved this.

[Yahoo Store: Get your New England Patriots championship gear right here!]

Newspapers are dead, long live newspapers!

These covers apparently were all over the state on newsstands. Collect one while you can — it will be a fun relic to frame and hang in the ol’ mancave for years to come. Good conversation starter, we say.

Hey, we were raised reading the paper on a daily basis, and many folks over a certain age who work in this business — including ourselves — were former newspaper employees. This is in our blood, so we commiserate. When the deadline hits, you have to make a call. The internet obviously has changed much of this, but the Globe had to go with what it had: a seemingly insurmountable lead for the Patriots to overcome. Plus, that photo was absolutely a (lost) classic. Hard to go elsewhere when you have that thousand-words shot of a helpless Tom Brady watching Robert Alford run back his interception for a 21-zip Falcons lead.

Of course, the Globe as well as anyone should know never to count Brady out of any game, especially one as big as the Super Bowl. Perhaps hedging a bit on the finality of “A Bitter End” would have been the wiser editorial approach.

But perhaps this was the Globe’s quietly brilliant strategy: print papers saying the Patriots lost — knowing that, duh, they’re going to come back obviously — in the hopes that folks buy these instant treasures. Almost like the old baseball card companies that would print “error” cards and then retract them as a way to sell more cards and drive up value.

Yes, we still can’t help thinking in newspaper terms now and again.

Did you snag a copy of one of these puppies? If so, send us a tweet with a picture to @Eric_Edholm or @YShutdownCorner and we’ll add them to the story here.

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Eric Edholm is a writer for Shutdown Corner on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at edholm@yahoo-inc.com or follow him on Twitter!

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