The NY Post’s Page Six gossip column ran this item earlier in the week:

December 19, 2005 – BEST-selling
writer Malcolm Gladwell identifies with New York Times fraudulist
Jayson Blair. The other night, the “Blink” author was on stage at the
Players Club as part of the trendy storytelling session known as the Moth.
Gladwell admitted he once got a buzz after he wrote up an earnings report
incorrectly as a cub reporter and the affected stock plummeted 10%. He
also inserted the Australian capital, Sydney, into a story about where an annual
AIDS conference might be held because he wanted to go there and thought no-one
“would mind.” His hilarious performance at the Moth, with Harvey Keitel
and Moby in attendance, climaxed with a manic description of his
competition with another scribe to get the phrase “perverse but often baffling”
into print — a feat he eventually achieved when writing about the economics of
health care.

Which prompted Crikey subscriber Dean Galloway to send through a correction to Page Six editor Richard Johnson:

Hi there

Australia’s capital is Canberra. Sydney just
thinks it’s the capital.
BTW, isn’t your editor Australian?

Cheers

DG

And he received this reply:

From: Johnson, Richard
[mailto:RJohnson@nypost.com]
Sent: Wednesday, 21 December 2005 2:51
AM
To: Dean Galloway
Subject: RE: Story
error

sydney
is a world capital, like New York.