NYT Corrects 1853 Piece After 12 Years Win

Story misspelled Solomon Northup's name
By Matt Cantor,  Newser Staff
Posted Mar 4, 2014 11:30 AM CST
NYT Corrects 1853 Piece After 12 Years Win
This image released by Fox Searchlight shows Chiwetel Ejiofor, second right, in a scene from "12 Years A Slave."   (AP Photo/Fox Searchlight, Francois Duhamel)

The New York Times followed the Best Picture win for 12 Years a Slave by tweeting a link to an 1853 article on Solomon Northup, the film's historical subject. The original article's lead describes what is to follow as "a more complete and authentic record than has yet appeared" on Northup's kidnapping. Authentic, perhaps, but erroneous: It spelled Northup's name wrong in two different ways. A Twitter user caught the errors, and now the Times has corrected them—just 161 years late, Poynter reports. The article spelled Northup's last name as "Northrop," while the headline spelled it "Northrup." (More 12 Years a Slave stories.)

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