But by then nearly half of the Wednesday papers had been printed with the wrong news, including the first edition, which goes to Utah County.

When Deseret Morning News managing editor Rick Hall woke up the next morning and looked at the two papers that had been delivered to his doorstep, he discovered the updated Deseret Morning News and a Salt Lake Tribune that had not been updated.

"I'm feeling pretty good about it," remembers Hall, who rode TRAX into town confident that Deseret Morning News readers had received the correct version of the night's events. "And then I step off the train and see the newspaper box, and it's just the opposite" — a Morning News with the old story, a Trib with the updated one.

Tribune deputy editor Tim Fitzpatrick also was relieved at first. "Phew," he remembers thinking when he saw the paper that arrived at his house. And then he discovered that more than a third of the Trib's papers carried the old headline.

That's how newspapering works, he notes. "Part of the deal is we have to cut off" at a certain time. "And news changes."

Like many papers, the Deseret Morning News and Salt Lake Tribune were able to update their Web editions hours earlier.

Some readers may have been confused if they read the first, happy headline and then heard a different report on the radio or TV. But the real losers were the miners' families, Hall adds. "For three hours they thought their husbands or fathers were alive. That's the real tragedy."

---

E-mail: jarvik@desnews.com