Simone Manuel has become the first African-American woman to win a gold medal in an individual Olympic swimming event.
But for a Californian paper that wasn't historic enough.
Mercury News, which brings the latest Silicon Valley and San Francisco Bay Area news, caused a backlash for their headline "Michael Phelps shares historic night with African-American":
The tweet was later deleted, but not before started comparing the blunder to a Donald Trump's boutade:
This headline. It is terrible. Her name is Simone Manuel. FYI, Mercury News. twitter.com/mercnews/statu…
The most ironic part about how clueless Mercury News is? Simone went to Stanford!— Ashley Holcomb (@ashleyxholcomb) August 12, 2016
Others attempted to explain it by blaming the recent wave of layoff in the paper's copy desk:
"Blame the AI" ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ pic.twitter.com/LuxvPcuv8y
Mercury News/Bay Area News Group laid off 11 people from their copy desk in April jimromenesko.com/2016/04/22/bay…pic.twitter.com/jcp2gOOTvo
Mercury News later apologised for the "insensitive headline" and changed the story:
We apologize for an insensitive headline earlier on a story about Simone Manuel and Michael Phelps' medal wins.bayareane.ws/2bmj2zQ
Manuel, 20, won the gold medal on Thursday night in the women's 100-meter freestyle in Rio, Brazil. She tied for first place with Canadian teenager Penny Oleksiak, with both setting an Olympic record of 52.70 seconds.
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