I guess it was the last day of work for this guy.

Yes it was real. Several other media outlet's picked up on the mistake.
Here's a slideshow of some other funny news headlines.

WARNING: Crude humor
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/02/24/the-funniest-headline-fai_n_474212.html#s70487

Is this actually real?

If it is, that is halaroius hahah.

NY Times have slipped with their editing. I read the paper pretty often, and there's a lot of spelling and punctuation errors.

I'm not surprised they slipped this one in.

Hilarious. :D

Or some we designer is pissed at the photographer and doesn't want to use his/her image...

Who's being morbid now, Niko?

It's a win win situation then.

Well, that's definitely better than the shooting sprees that seem to be in fashion these days...
But I guess in this case that would just backfire by helping your employer sell more copies.

I get the impression that a NY Times employee was pissed about something and this was his payback.

Whoops.

Wow, did Clinton and Bachelet get killed in an aftershock? They look rather angelish to me.

Hillary Clinton has not aged well!