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So remember back when the NYT misquoted John Kerry's "botched joke" back in November and had to run a correction? It's now corrected online, but the original article, by Kate Zernike, quoted Kerry as making the joke exactly as it'd appeared in his prepared remarks — "Do you know where you end up if you don't study, if you aren't smart, if you're intellectually lazy? You end up getting us stuck in a war in Iraq. Just ask President Bush" — except with the omission of the word 'us.' The actual quote, as per the correction the Times originally ran on 11/3: ""You know, education, if you make the most of it, you study hard, you do your homework and you make an effort to be smart, you can do well. If you don't, you get stuck in Iraq."

Or, you get stuck making the same mistake and running the same correction again.

That's what happened today, when the Times was forced to run a correction that was nearly identical to the one they'd originally published in November, after yesterday's article by Adam Nagourney about how Kerry won't run in 08 quoted Zernicke's original, erroneous reporting of the joke word for word. How did this happen? Like most things about real journalism, it's beyond our ken. One thing's still certain, though: Kerry's joke is still kind of funny either way.

NYT Repeats Error on NYT's Botched Joke [Brendan Nyhan]
Corrections: For The Record [NYT]

UPDATE: Times senior editor Greg Brock writes us with an answer to the question:

Because I oversee corrections for The Times, I wanted to drop you a note and set the record straight on the Kerry "botched joke" correction this morning. Despite the item posted on Gawker, Adam Nagourney did not make the error. The quotation was added to the article by an editor — without Adam's knowledge.

Had I known that, the correction would have begun with our standard phrase: "Because of an editing error." The reason I did not know it was an editing error was because the editors preparing the correction did not talk to Adam or check with an editor to see if it had been an editing error — our standard policy. We are never supposed to publish a correction without first talking to the reporter or the editor who made the error. We have slipped a few times. But, in general, no staff member is supposed to be surprised to see a correction about their work in the paper — as Adam was this morning.

Just for the record, Adam covered the original "botched joke" story. His article on Nov. 1, 2006, had the correct quotation as spoken by Mr. Kerry. It was, as the Gawker item correctly points out, a subsequent Political Memo on Nov. 2 that carried the incorrect quotation. And we corrected that on Nov. 3.