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Newspapers - The Blog of Lists

Fun list of headline bloopers

July 20th 2009 02:26

The bright lights, red carpets and star status of the movie world mask the sweat, tedium and long hours which are the day-to-day reality of film-making. In the same way, the notion of the investigative journalist as an indefatigable and incorruptible defender of truth and social justice is replaced by a less glamorous, more humdrum reality for anyone who spends some time in the newsroom of a major newspaper.

The star quality is there of course, waiting to erupt in the form of a stellar acting performance, the uncovering of a major news story, or the writing of a particularly brilliant and worthy headline. You just don't see it every day.

Something else you don't see every day is the opposite — memorable moments of madness. In film they call them bloopers, and it is with delight that they are collected and packaged as 45-minute-plus advertising farces for those of us who enjoy other people's mistakes.

Moments of madness happen in newspapers too, and particularly in the busy engine room at the centre of it all, referred to within the industry as the subs desk. If you're a young reporter, you refer to it in hushed tones, and you hope, indeed pray, that you don't get summoned to visit it. That can never be good news.

The aura of knowledge and invincibility in all matters relating to the written language is a fallacy, however. Sub-editors too are influenced by the mundane — by head ache, heart ache, hangover or the pressure of home life. And under the influence of these distractions, mistakes can happen.

Those mistakes, over many years and in many places, include the following list of newspaper headlines:

Something Went Wrong in Jet Crash, Experts Say
Include Your Children When Baking Cookies
Police Begin Campaign to Run Down Jaywalkers
Drunks Get Nine Months in Violin Case
Iraqi Head Seeks Arms
Is there a Ring of Debris around Uranus?
Prostitutes Appeal to Pope
Panda Mating Fails; Veterinarian Takes Over
British Left Waffles on Falkland Islands
Clinton Wins Budget; More Lies Ahead
Plane Too Close to Ground, Crash Probe Told
Miners Refuse to Work After Death
Juvenile Court to Try Shooting Defendant
Stolen Painting Found by Tree
Local High School Dropouts Cut in Half
War Dims Hope for Peace
If Strike isn't Settled Quickly, it May Last a While
Couple Slain; Police Suspect Homicide
Man Struck by Lightning Faces Battery Charge
New Study of Obesity Looks for Larger Test Group
Astronaut Takes Blame for Gas in Space
Kids Make Nutritious Snacks
Two Sisters Reunited after 18 Years in Checkout Counter
Two Soviet Ships Collide, One Dies
Killer Sentenced to Die for Second Time in 10 Years
Never Withhold Herpes Infection from Loved One
Cold Wave Linked to Temperatures
Red Tape Holds Up New Bridge
Deer Kill 17,000
Typhoon Rips Through Cemetery; Hundreds Dead
Chef Throws His Heart into Helping Feed Needy
British Union Finds Dwarfs in Short Supply
Man Minus Ear Waives Hearing
Deaf College Opens Doors to Hearing
Air Head Fired

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Posted By: Chris Champion - Category: Journalism, Newspapers, Publishing

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Great journalism quotes 2

January 14th 2009 06:06

Quotes about journalism and newspapers fall generally into two categories. The first sort comprises the many fine words which have collectively described the aims and ambitions of newspapers, and the honour, integrity and, at times, courage, of the men and women who work to bring those newspapers to you. These quotes are numerous and occasionally stirring. Generally, however, they are as dull as a broadsheet editorial on taxation policy.

The other sort are much more fun. Almost every one of the great wits in history has had something to say about journalism, and rarely was it a nice thing. Journalism is fun to make fun of it. Forget the honour and integrity. This second category of journalism quotes comprises almost entirely jibes at the Fourth Estate.

As an old newspaper journalist, I could resent that. Instead, I got a lot of laughs from the following.

Freedom of the press in Britain means freedom to print such of the proprietor's prejudices as the advertisers don't object to.

Hannen Swaffer (1879-1962), Tom Driberg Swaff (1974)

Rock journalism is people who can't write interviewing people who can't talk for people who can't read.

Frank Zappa (1940-93), Linda Botts Loose Talk (1980)

I'm just waiting for the paper coming. Not that there's much in it. The correspondence I initiated on the length of the Archbishop of Canterbury's hair seems to have gone off the boil.

Alan Bennett (1934- ), Talking Heads (1988)

A good newspaper is never nearly good enough but a lousy newspaper is a joy forever.

Garrison Keillor (1942-), That Old 'Picayune-Moon (Harper's, September, 1990)

Anonymous sources are to journalism what silicon enhancements are to the feminine figure; they look impressive to the gullible, but something doesn't feel right.

Larry King (1933- ), speaking in London, 2005

I keep reading between the lies.

Goodman Ace (1899-1982)

It's not the world that's got so much worse but the news coverage that's got so much better.

G K Chesterton (1874-1936) (attrib)

When I say 'start' let's have five seconds of silence. (Pause). That's pretty good. That gives something for the news media to quote with absolute accuracy.

Bobby Knight (1940- ) Indiana basketball coach (1982)

I'm the Clergyman who's never been to London,
I'm the Clergyman who's never been to Town.
An enterprising journalist approached me
And every word I said, he jotted down.
I had to face a battery of cameras
And hold an extra service in the snow,
And all because I've never been to London,
And haven't got the least desire to go.

Noël Coward (1899-1973), Words and Music (1932)

I am a journalist and, under the modern journalist's code pf Olympian objectivity (and total purity of motive), I am absolved of responsibility. We journalists don't have to step on roaches. All we have to do is turn on the kitchen light and watch the critters scurry.

P.J. O'Rourke (1947- ) Parliament of Whores (1991)

Oxford Dictionary of Humorous Quotations, The Penguin Dictionary of Modern Humorous Quotations, www.schindler.org; image: Zoltan Glass: A Journalist writing in his BMW (Paris 1934)

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Posted By: Chris Champion - Category: Journalism, Newspapers

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Great journalism quotes

January 8th 2009 11:14

Quotes about journalism and newspapers fall generally into two categories. The first comprises the many fine words which have collectively described the aims and ambitions of newspapers, and the honour, integrity and, at times, courage, of the men and women who work to bring those newspapers to you. These quotes are numerous and occasionally stirring. Generally, however, they are as dull as a broadsheet editorial on taxation policy.

The other sort are much more fun. Almost every one of the great wits in history has had something to say about journalism, and rarely was it a nice thing. Journalism is fun to make fun of it. Forget the honour and integrity. This second category of journalism quotes comprises almost entirely jibes at the Fourth Estate.

As an old newspaper journalist, I could resent that. Instead, I got a lot of laughs from the following.

The newspapers! Sir, they are the most villainous – licentious – abominable – infernal – Not that I ever read them – No – I make it a rule never to look into a newspaper.

Richard Brinsley Sheridan (1751-1816), The Critic (1779)

None of the worst French novels from which careful parents try to protect their children can be as bad as what is daily bought and laid upon the breakfast table of every educated family in England, and its effect must be most pernicious to the public morals of the country.

Queen Victoria (1819-1901), letter to the Lord Chancellor, (1859)

Journalism largely consists in saying "Lord Jones Dead" to people who never knew Lord Jones was alive.

G.K. Chesterton (1874-1936), Wisdom of Father Brown (1914)

Editor: a person employed by a newspaper, whose business it is to separate the wheat from the chaff, and to see that the chaff is printed.

Elbert Hubbard (1859-1915), The Roycroft Dictionary (1914)

You should always believe all you read in the newspapers, as this makes them more interesting.

Rose Macaulay (1881-1958), A Casual Commentary (1926)

I think it well to remember that, when writing for the newspapers, we are writing for an elderly lady in Hastings who has two cats of which she is passionately fond. Unless our stuff can successfully compete for her interest with those cats, it is no good.

Wilmott Lewis (1877-1950), Claud Cockburn In Time of Trouble (1957)

You cannot hope to bribe or twist,
Thank God! the British journalist.
But, seeing what the man will do
unbribed, there's no occasion to.

Humbert Wolfe (1886-1940), Over the Fire (1930)

He once telephoned a semicolon from Moscow.

James Bone, on being asked (in 1935) whether George Mair had been a fastidious reporter.

No self-respecting fish would be wrapped in a Murdoch newspaper.

Mike Royko (1932-), Karl Meyer Pundits, Poets and Wits (1990)

The art of newspaper paragraphing is to stroke a platitude until it purrs like an epigram.

Don Marquis (1878-1937), E. Anthony O Rare Don Marquis (1962)

Oxford Dictionary of Humorous Quotations, The Penguin Dictionary of Modern Humorous Quotations, www.schindler.org

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