My print edition of the Times carried a front page news article about the end of the hunt for two men who had escaped from a maximum security prison in upstate New York. It included this sentence: "They found shelter in empty hunting cabins, but left telltale clues of their presence that helped a vast array of agencies — from the State Police to the United States Marshals to the Federal Bureau of Investigation to state Forest Rangers — hone in on them over the last week."
That sent me to the Times archives in search of a May 25, 1980 "On Language" column by William Safire, who wrote, "The phrase 'to hone in on' is a mistake. The confusion is based on 'to home in,' or 'to home in on' ..."
According to the website Newsdiffs.org, sometime between 9:17 pm and 10:50 pm some astute Timesman or Timeswoman caught the mistake and fixed it by changing the 'n" in "hone" to an "m" in "home."