On Sunday, The Independent published an article by sex blogger and author Zoe Margolis that included a subtitle labelling her incorrectly as a prostitute. Though the inaccuracy was quickly amended in the online copy, the original version had been cached (with the URL containing the reference available for longer) and the print version of the paper also published the damaging declaration.

Margolis – who blogs at Girl with a one-track mind – was once anonymous, but since being outed by The Sunday Times has been using her profile to challenge the perception of women and sexuality in the media. Ironically, the claim that she’d once been a ‘hooker’ is an example of the gender-related sexism and stereotyping that she has been campaigning to dispel.

She said in a statement: “I’m absolutely distraught by this damage to my reputation both professionally and personally. Unfortunately this situation just shows how much work still needs to be done to challenge the sexism of the media in their conflation of female sexual desire with the sex industry.”

Though a lot people will have subsequently have read the corrected piece on The Independent’s site, or perhaps a blog post or tweet detailing the incident, a large number of people will simply have read the paper without seeing the online version. Despite the huge amount of people consuming news online, there are still many that may never visit the website of their favourite broadsheet or tabloid. Nieman Labs estimates that just the online share of the newspaper audience attention is just 3% in the US (and that’s a good benchmark even though it’s not local to the UK).

Even though the majority of the paper’s readership is web savvy, Independent.co.uk isn’t the only resource that people use form opinions about bloggers. This mistake also needs to be corrected offline, as without printed retraction, it’s not only damaging to Margolis’ reputation – but also puts the publisher in a bad light due to the lack of a formal apology.