And then there are the days the opposite happens.

This is one of those days for the Peoria Journal Star.

C.J. Summers and I were guests of John Sharp’s journalism class at Illinois Central College today. Sharp, whose fill-time gig is being the PJS’s City Hall reporter, was a little miffed at the headline that topped this story about how the Peoria City Council was going to consider a proposal to renovate the Pere Marquette hotel block.

Trouble is, the headline said the council was going to vote on a proposal concerning Big Al’s. Not exactly true. The council voted last month to change its adult use ordinance, which would allow Big Al’s to move to a new location. In other words, any proposal the council considers is about Big Al’s as much as the downtown museum project is about Sears — not much.

I noticed the bad headline on the Web this morning, then I noticed it had been changed. Unfortunately, the headline on the print edition couldn’t be changed, and this is the version that hit news boxes and everyone’s front porch this morning.

The episode demonstrates one of the big advantages to doing journalism on the Web, as opposed to print or broadcast.

It needs to be noted for those who don’t know: Most reporters  — including those at the Journal Star — don’t write their own headlines.  Someone on the copy desk does.

This means sometimes reporters can get burned. Readers and sources often don’t know or care. All they know is that the story is wrong. But reporters know that mistakes happen. The mature attitude is to move on to the next assignment, knowing that mistakes are rare.

And then there are times that the copy desk is snake bit.

The Journal Star did it again, on the same day. Only this time I thought to do a screen capture:

The headline is “O’Neill elected County Board vice chairman.”

Well, close. In reality, the article stated that Tom O’Neill was elected Peoria County Board chairman, and current chair Bill Prather was elected vice chairman.

The article by Karen McDonald was posted at 11:07 a.m. By 6:16 p.m., it was still incorrect on the Journal Star site. One hopes the error is fixed before someone pushes a button and sends it to the printing press.