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The New York Times (again) misses the mark on Southie

Homes on Telegraph Street in South Boston.
Homes on Telegraph Street in South Boston.(JOHN TLUMACKI/GLOBE STAFF/File)

Nearly four years after the New York Times tried to call South Boston “SoBo,” the publication has made another apparent blunder: Calling those who hail from the neighborhood “Southies.”

The newest transgression against South Boston came in a profile of renowned chef Barbara Lynch, which was published to the Times’s site on Monday.

The term is introduced in the second sentence of the article’s copy: “The chef is a fierce Southie, a local term for this neighborhood and the people who built it.” It’s then used again later in the story: “She still curses like an old-school Southie, but without the accent.”

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After a Globe reporter tweeted a polite clarification to Julia Moskin, who is the writer of the article, Moskin responded that she asked Lynch herself. The chef said she was indeed “a Southie,” and “that was good enough for us.”

That didn’t stop others from ridiculing the term online, though:

In the New York Times’s defense: Globe reporter Todd Wallack points out that this slang dictionary claims the term “Southie” can be used both ways.