A Newsweek commemorative election issue celebrating “Madam President” and an anticipated win by Hillary Clinton has been recalled from shelves across the United States after a Twitter user first spilled the beans about the mistake.
The issue was produced and distributed by Topix Media, and about 125,000 copies of the magazine were distributed before Topix realized it had sent out the wrong magazine. Its previously prepared Donald Trump edition is now being sent out to stores.
From the Editors: 2 special edition covers for 2016 election outcomes were produced by a Newsweek licensee, Topix Media, and not by Newsweek pic.twitter.com/MwC4RytGbC
— Newsweek (@Newsweek) November 7, 2016
“Like everybody else we got it wrong,” Topix CEO Tony Rolando told the New York Post on Thursday.
“All wholesalers and retailers have been asked to return any issues they have as we need to clear room for [150,000 copies of] the President Trump issue,” Romando said. “We expect it to sell very well as there is obviously a great demand.”
The error was reminiscent of the Chicago Daily Tribune issue in 1948 that proclaimed Republican Thomas Dewey the winner of that presidential election, with large font headlines of “Dewey Defeats Truman” below the masthead.
Newsweek editors pinned the blame on Topix: “From the Editors: 2 special edition covers for 2016 election outcomes were produced by a Newsweek licensee, Topix Media, and not by Newsweek.”
In its article celebrating Clinton’s imagined victory, Newsweek editorialized: “President-elect Hillary Clinton ‘went high’ when her opponent and his supporters went ever lower…” and so it transpired that “on election day, Americans across the country roundly rejected the kind of fear and hate-based conservatism peddled by Donald Trump… The highest glass ceiling in the western world had finally shattered.”