Typo of the Day: LA Olympics Take a Cost Hit

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You come to Mother Jones for unique journalism, and we love doing it for you. That's it. That's the upshot of our fall fundraising drive, and we're hoping to raise $250,000 in a shorter than normal three-week window so we can keep right on doing it.

Oh man, we have yet another ridiculous increase in the budget for a public boondoggle in California. This time it’s the LA Olympics:

$700,000! That’s outrageous. That’s the price of a grande latte for every resident of, um, Oxnard. How much does a grande latte cost, anyway?

The online edition provides the actual numbers:

The predicted cost of staging the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics has risen to $6.9 billion, according to an updated budget released Tuesday by the private committee responsible for staging the massive sports event. The new figure represents a $700 million increase over previous estimates, with organizers saying they had to adjust for inflation after L.A., which originally bid for the 2024 Games, agreed to wait four more years.

OK, I get how $700 million can turn into $700 billion or vice versa, but how does it turn into $700,000? There’s no indication in the story that there’s even been a correction, let alone an explanation of how the mistake happened. Weird. But I suppose it doesn’t matter. By the time 2028 rolls around, I’ll bet that the difference between $700,000 and $700 million will seem kind of quaint.