Ronald H. Kuhne died April 15, 2007 in Fort Wayne, IN, at the age of 66. His obituary appearing almost a month later in the Beacon Journal on Sunday did not mention that he was a former Beacon Journal reporter nor that he was the perpetrator of one of the greatest pranks in the newspaper’s history.
Kuhne was responsible for writing a one paragraph weather summary for page 1. He thought he would have fun with the copy desk so he wrote a graph that ended something like "The sun will rise at xxx a.m. tomorrow, God willing. The "God willing" bit was missed by the city editor, the copy desk and the slotter. it was printed in the newspaper. Kuhne was fired, but hired back the same day.
There were a number of posts recalling it on this blog.
Click on the headline to read about Kuhne and the great prank.
Email comment from Dan Warner:
ReplyDeleteSchlemmer fired him.
I rehired him, hours later, on Maidenburg's orders.
God Willing, we'll all laugh about it when we meet in that Big Newsroom in the Sky that Arnold Miller so often promised us.