Where Are The Editors at the PG?

Chuck Noll and his first Steelers coaching staff

at St. Vincent College

1969

Perhaps I am becoming what I always decry - an Old Guy Shouting At Clouds - but sometimes, you just gotta do what you gotta do.

Today the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette ran a feature on the sports pages to mark the 50th Anniversary of Head Coach Chuck Noll's first training camp with the Pittsburgh Steelers.     The article was written by Joshua Axelrod, and no Steelers fan will dispute the appropriateness of such a story.  To research and write the story, Mr. Axelrod went into the morgues of both the PG and the old Pittsburgh Press and culled his article from reports from the Steelers beat writers at the time, Pat Livingston of the Press and Jack Sell of the PG.  Again, not a bad way to go about it, and probably about the easiest way for a reporter to come up with a story.

The problem is that throughout the article Mr. Axelrod refers to the PG's reporter at the time as "Jack Sells".   So, here are my questions:

• How is that in looking at the copy from the 1969 issues of the Post-Gazette, Mr. Axelrod saw the name "Jack Sell" and typed the name "Jack Sells" in his article?
• How is it that an editor at the PG missed this mistake?  
• Is there no one on the PG's sports department editing staff that remembers Jack Sell and who could have corrected this error? Obviously not. 

Jack Sell, as I remember him, was a sportswriter of the old school.  He revelled in cliches.  Boxers were "mitt tossers", track and field athletes were "thin clads", football players were "gridders", and I believe it was he who coined the term "Rooney U" to describe the Steelers. His brand of sports writing was of a bygone era, and he would be laughed at today, but despite all of that, he deserves to have his former long time employer get his name right when referencing his work here in 2019.