The Jan. 1 edition of the Star Tribune ran two versions of the same AP story (with only slight variations) about well-known businesses going bankrupt: one inside the A section and the other on the cover of the Business section. It’s overkill and an oversight to be sure, but hey, to err is human, especially over the holidays when editors probably find it harder to huddle. Chalk it up as another sign of short-handedness after waves of staff layoffs and buyouts.

But today’s double-dipping at the wire-service trough is also an ominous and ironic way to begin January — a month in which editors will try merging sections of the newspaper to cut costs and when Strib death-watchers say the paper’s owners could finally file for bankruptcy. The headline over the AP story on page A11 reads like a Strib warning to itself: “New year is shaping up as ‘very, very ugly’ for some well-known brands.”