These are the days that try a publisher's ulcers.

A story appeared twice on the front page of two of our three editions today. A mechanical problem in the mailroom meant some readers didn't get a chance to see that error until three or four hours later than usual. Earlier in the week, in the midst of the worst Wall Street crisis in eighty years, we published the same stock page two days in a row. Also this week, some stories that were supposed to be published on dailyfreeman.com weren't. And one day a week or so ago, the wrong TV page was printed in the paper.

How can any and all of these things occur? Fact is, they can and do at all papers. But they shouldn't. And a series of unconnected errors in a short time span here only makes it worse, both from the readers' standpoint and mine.

It's always been my practice to deal with these matters in-house. No need for me to reveal here, "It was his (or her or their) fault." Our managers know who's to blame and we're addressing it.

For the purposes of this blog, however, the best I can assure you is that we apologize for the carelessness, and we're trying our hardest to prevent it from happening again.