WASHINGTON POST READERS SEE DOUBLE

I did a double-take when I opened my Washington Post this Easter morning and saw the very same Tom Toles cartoon that was in the Saturday paper. And the same George Will column, and the same David Broder column, and the same Jim Hoagland column. And the same letters to the editor on the main editorial page. Only the newspaper's own editorials were new. The Washington Post had printed some of its best-read articles on the wrong day.

A little note on the main editorial page said: "Because of an error that occurred during the final production of the Saturday newspaper, the majority of the material that appears on these two pages was printed in some of those editions. The three editorials were not affected by the problem." The note said the Saturday items are on the web site www.washingtonpost.com.

And that was it. No further explanation was offered. The web site Washingtonpost.com, as far as I can tell, ignored the whole thing.

So did other media outlets and blogs. The collective modern media politely averted its eyes from an astoundingly embarrassing episode.

Mistakes occur in production all the time. I have seen headlines that read, "MAIN SPACER HED GOES HERE," and things of that nature. Back during the Vietnam War, the Post ran a famous headline that read, 'B-52's BOMB BUTSKIRTS ON QUANGTRI OUNKERS," leading to jokes about the crueltry of depriving the peaceful Ounkers of Quangri of their modest clothing. The occasional headline goof is one thing. But to print the wrong page in the paper's most-read section, and deliver to thousands of homes, is truly astounding.

Perhaps even more amazing is that no one seems to think the error is worthy of note. It reminds me of the story of a radio station in Richmond that played automated programming in the overnight period. One night, the entire night's program was played backwards -- and no one complained. Either no one was listening or no one took it seriously enough to mention it.

The Post and many other papers worry about their future. But if one of the biggest papers in the United States commits a gaffe like this and doesn't explain it, and no one comments on it, then you have to wonder how many people are reading anymore.