The Oz‘s ALP leadership graph gaffe. James Massola — writing in The Weekend Australian on Saturday in a page-two story titled “PM marshals backers to corral MPs’ drift to Rudd” — should heed the advice of fellow hack Laura Tingle when it comes to writing stories about who has the numbers in a leadership challenge. Speaking on ABC’s Insiders on February 5, Tingle — The Australian Financial Review‘s political editor — said:

“I think it’s a bit pointless because no one is counting. The Australian had a valiant attempt on the weekend to put people in different camps. You just eyeball it and you know that there are names that aren’t right. I know from having tried this in past years that it’s an exercise in masochism because you can’t get it right, people will be complaining. The dangers is that you end up misleading readers who think that if you put a name down in one camp it’s because that person has said to you ‘yep I’m for Kevin’ or ‘I’m for Julia’. It just doesn’t work like that.”

Well it didn’t work like that for The Weekend Oz, which ran an embarrassing correction today due to an error-riddled graphic that accompanied Massola’s story:

To help Crikey‘s readers out, we’ve highlighted the many mistakes for you from Saturday’s article:

The Oz has an updated numbers graphic in today’s edition, featuring the correct formatting of Glenn Sterle’s name.

The ESPN’s moment of Linsanity. But as far as cock-ups go, The Oz has nothing on American sports broadcaster ESPN. Jeremy Lin is nothing short of a sensation in the NBA — born to Taiwanese immigrants, the New York Knicks point guard has had an amazing start to his career at the Knicks against all odds — with the Twitter hashtag #Linsanity trending for weeks now. Last week — after leading his team to five straight wins — the Knicks and Lin finally stumbled, losing to the New Orleans Hornets — Lin was involved in numerous turnovers. On February 17 — following the Knicks’ loss to New Orleans — the following article and headline was posted on ESPN.com’s mobile site:

The highly offensive headline — “Chink In The Armor” — caused furore considering Lin’s Asian background. The ESPN staffer responsible for the headline was summarily fired and ESPN was forced to issue an apology:

“Last night, ESPN.com’s mobile website posted an offensive headline referencing Jeremy Lin at 2:30am ET. The headline was removed at 3:05am ET. We are conducting a complete review of our cross-platform editorial procedures and are determining appropriate disciplinary action to ensure this does not happen again. We regret and apologize for this mistake.”

Then ESPN used the same racist line again. And then again. For the record, this morning Lin bounced back starring with a 28-point, 14-assist game that ended a six-game winning streak by the Dallas Mavericks.

Front page of the day. Readers of The Sun awoke today to find out The Sun on Sunday will be launched next week. The Sun on Sunday will fill the void left by the closure of fellow News International stablemate The News of the World, which was shut down following the phone hacking scandal. As The Sun’s front page says:

“The Sun on Sunday has arrived. Next weekend will see the birth of the first ever Sunday edition of your favourite paper. Rupert Murdoch announce last week that The Sun on Sunday would be coming ‘very soon’. Now that momentous new dawn is here.”

Murdoch letter to News Int staff ‘full of legal errors’

“Rupert Murdoch is not legally obliged to hand over evidence of wrongdoing in his newspapers to the police, contrary to claims he made in a letter to News International staff, a leading human rights lawyer has said.” — The Guardian

TvCentral closes after data disaster

“Australian television industry website TvCentral has decided to shut its doors a week after a server migration saw all of its data lost in the process.” — mUmBRELLA

Is this our first peek at the iPad 3?

“Chinese blog Apple Daily claims to have leaked pictures of the iPad 3 before Apple officially planned to give its own sneak peek in early March.” — Mashable

NY Times’ journo dies of asthma attack in Syria

“The Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist was on assignment in eastern Syria, without the government’s knowledge, when he apparently died of an asthma attack. ” — Poynter

So you want to be Jerusalem bureau chief …

“Here are some rough rules for Times bureau chiefs (and other journalists) for navigating the world’s most delicate reporting assignment…” — Foreign Policy