Last week, America's paper of record published an article on Alex From Target, a cherubic teen superstore employee who briefly became the most notorious human on Twitter before his inspirational rise to fame was co-opted by society's least upstanding citizens. The Times' story was perfunctory except for one curious part that revealed a lack of pop culture knowledge that will make any true '90s kid spit Sunny D onto his Gameboy.

In explaining how Alex From Target's impact reverberated across the web, writer Leslie Kaufman noted that a large number of copycat memes had sprouted up in its wake. She wrote (via Wayback Machine):

The problem here is immediately apparent to anyone who watched the Nickelodeon channel in the '90s. "Kel from Good Burger" is not, of course, an actual person, but instead a creation of Kel Mitchell, orange soda enthusiast and star of flagship Nickelodeon programs All That and Keenan & Kel.

The New York Times, which has won 114 Pulitzer Prizes for "excellence in journalism," did not address this glaring error in its Alex From Target story until today. The article is now affixed with the following correction:

This is true: Kel Mitchell did not work at Good Burger as a teenager. Instead, he was a teenage actor in a film. This is a fact that could have been uncovered simply by googling the phrase "Good Burger," which is a fictional fast food chain. One is forced to wonder about the editing practices at the New York Times, a place that employs several people who just assumed Good Burger was a real place.

Kaufman's story now looks like this:

Unfortunately, history remembers all sins.

[image via YouTube]