Our press

From The Newseum collection of daily front pages.
Click on images for larger view.

The Dispatch/Argus front page was not available online, though editor Gordon Nelson writes an honest mea culpa of sorts accounting for how they dealt with the story.

Still, I liked my job a whole lot less later Wednesday morning. Through no fault of our own, we deceived thousands of our readers. Those who read The Argus or the early version of The Dispatch didn't get the true story. And that bothers me. Big time.

The actual results weren't awful. The true story broke far too late for The Argus, of course, but only about 4,000 copies of The Dispatch were printed with the miners-alive story. The remaining 28,000 copies contained the real news.

The Rockford Journal-Star was one of several papers who at least included some qualifications in their subheadline, saying they were "reported" alive. Other papers included "according to family members".