POST-DATED ARTICLE IN A PRE-DATED NEWSPAPER

Journalists are among the few privileged people, who get to witness significant history unfolding, while chronicling news of the day and major events. This requires a logical sequence of covering and publishing stories. That's why it's strange to see an article that bears a post-dated time stamp, being reported in a newspaper bearing an earlier date.

Quite confusing, admittedly.

The highlighted article makes reference to a study published in the June 2019 issue of Cancer Epidemiology Journal.

This could potentially be unsettling to a reader, simply because the article is appearing in a newspaper published in March 2019!

It could be a simplistic interpretation, especially to those well-versed with how scientific publications are done in volumes.

But to an average consumer of media products like me, (and hopefully you), a June 2019 issue of a journal, being quoted in a March 2019 newspaper is unusual, (and creepy).

A quick check online, confirms that the issue being referred to does appear in a June 2019 volume.

(And this post is in April 2019, in case you didn't notice).

The writer of the article should perhaps then have dedicated a short explanatory paragraph, to provide context that would enable any reader to make sense of the apparent dating anomaly.

A post-dated cheque can't work before the stated date. A 'post-dated article' also needs to be checked!