Horrific coincidence sabotages Columbus Monthly magazine cover

For anyone and everyone who has ever worked in print media, it’s the professional nightmare we all fear.

And it happened this week to Columbus Monthly magazine.

The cover of a current edition of the magazine contains a headline that, until the tragic events of this week at the Ohio State Fair, was entirely appropriate, even innocuous, for the story it announced. The story presumably is about a pie-throwing incident decades ago involving former Ohio Gov. Rhodes as he was kicking off the Ohio State Fair.

The headline reads:

“SPLAT AT THE STATE FAIR: THE GOVERNOR, A YIPPIE AND A BANANA CREAM PIE.”

The cover also includes an illustrated ambulance related to a cover story on “Top Doctors.”

The headline was in all likelihood written days or even weeks before the accident on a state fair ride claimed the life of an 18-year-old man and left several others injured, some critically.

And the headline writer and page designer had no way of knowing how the headline would appear today. It was a coincidence of the most horrific kind.

At least one retailer had pulled the issue off its shelves as of Friday, July 28.

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