How about a retraction?

What slump?
In October, I (along with everyone else in the scribosphere) wrote my two cents about the supposed box-office slump, bitching specifically about how the New York Times kept having weekly stories about how the box office was imploding. Now the New York Times has an article saying that there is no slump (soul-crushing NYT registration required). No shit.

Of course, this article is by one "Lorne Manly," which sounds like the name of a porn star, and the weekly doom-and-gloom articles were not, as far as I can tell. One from October 31st ("Horror Reigns at Box Office, but Slump Persists") has a byline credited to "CATHERINE BILLEY; COMPILED BY BEN SISARIO (NYT)". It's not like it's surprising that a major newspaper doesn't hold a strict line on the box-office news coming out of Hollywood. Doom-and-gloom sells better than the reality of "Everything's fine, it's just a fluke."

In fact, they've managed to spin two sets of stories out of nothing at all: The first set talking about how there's this horrible slump, and the second set talking about how there really IS no slump. I just wish the latter set of articles would mention, "Ha ha, whoops, we just happen to be among those who published weekly articles about this supposed slump, which doesn't really exist. Oops." Of course, they could have saved everyone a lot of time and anguish by simply... not publishing the non-issue non-stories to begin with.