Subslink: 39 strange but true newspaper headlines

Bit of fun after recent rantings. Headlines include, the ridiculous:

Alton Attorney Accidentally Sues Himself

the badly-worded:

Chicken with artifical legs dies a hero

and the intriguiing:

Hairdo kills mum

For the full list, go here.

Storking the typo-makers

You can publish then edit all you like but, beware, the original may still be ‘out there’ – and there are people willing to spot it, tweet it, snap it, blog it and generally announce it to the world. Like this one from Tom Ackroyd who took a snapshot of a 3News headline typo tonight (since corrected) and uploaded it to Twitpic before tweeting me:

Too heavy for the stalk: newborn weighs in at 6.4kg

Beauty. It makes me think fondly of all those job adverts for sub-editors asking for the ‘ability to spot a literal at 50 paces’.

Even funnier is that the original 50-pace typo spotter uknzguy has pointed out that the error has been immortalised in the URL.

Note to self:  check my permalinks! Thank Buddha, there’s an edit function in WordPress for just this kind of cock-up.

Obama: 10 funny headlines…

…and captions, story links, blog posts, videos and animations on the man with the initials B.O.

1. Nation Finally Shitty Enough To Make Social Progress (The Onion)
   
2. Black Man Given Nation’s Worst Job (The Onion)
   
3. “All right, now what do I do?” (Uncyclopedia)
   
4. Obama a Maria Carey fan (The Hindu)
   
5. Bark Obama the speaking dog (who’s actually called Herpe, watch him woof Obama here!)
6. Time To Take The White People’s Guns! (Wonkette; see the animation at Get Your War On)
   
7. Obama Prays To Baby Jesus All The Time (Wonkette)
   
8. Australia to invade US if Obama elected (Dead Brain)
   
9. Black/Brown Prime Minister? (from the lovely Speak You’re Branes)
10. Obama – f**kin legend (ok this so was my niece’s Facebook status, sue me.)

Non-stop top headline service launches

Thanks to twblog on Twitter for pointing out this lovely header:

bmi to stop non-stop Jeddah service

See the story in all its glory on Travelmole.

Hitler gives good headline

This vintage headline from the Birmingham Mail must be true – I saw it on a teatowel. Thanks to JS for suggesting it for the Top 10 (er, 11) rudest headlines but it’s getting a post to itself.

Top 10 rudest headlines in the world ever, possibly

One of my first jobs out of the seedy skyscraper that was the London College of Printing was on a local paper, the South East London & Kentish Mercury. By some miracle, I persuaded the editor to hire me as Leisure Editor – a dream job tripping around the comedy and music venues of Deptford and beyond. (Afterwards one of the reporters told me I’d been hired because I’d said I did my ironing to Doris Day, but of course I was also cheap – back then!)

Anyways, really I was still a newbie to layout/subbing so when the sports editor filed his review of a gig by a UK folk duo and supplied a perfectly-fitting headline, I didn’t blink. Alas, on Thursday morning I was summoned over to the news editor’s desk. Dear Roger thrust the paper at me, demanding an explanation. ‘What? What’s the problem?’ I asked. It wasn’t until he said it out loud that I realised the gaffe:

Sweet folk all!

And in a rather large type size, too. Heheh. Luckily he forgave my blushing innocence and let me buy him pints in the pub for five hours next press day. Still, the tabloid in me said ’so what?’ - all the better for getting readers to read on, I reckoned. And hey hadn’t Kelvin Mackenzie once subbed on the same subs desk?

So I’ve been thinking, what other lovelies have there been over the years – and perhaps not so accidental… Here’s my eclectic (and possibly not all true) list of Top 10 Rudest Headlines:

1. Great tits cope well with warming (BBC)
2. Elton takes David up the aisle (The Sun)
3. Sir Vivian Fuchs off to Antarctica (anyone actually confirm this one?)
4. Prostitutes appeal to Pope (or this?)
5. Scott wants head job (Western Times)
6. Butt blow for Newcastle (Guardian)
7. NZ finds Black Cox hard to swallow (The Register)
8. Munching Swedish beaver causes blackout (The Local)
9. Zip me up before you go go (The Sun)
10. Tiger Woods plays with his own balls, Nike says (AP Wire)

I’m sure there’s probably worse out there. I mean, all those science journals must surely have had some fun with Uranus… so to speak.

London Lite vs The London Paper. And the winner is…

Well, on Friday night, it was London Lite with the headline:

Let the games Bejiing!

Both front pages went with the same pic of fireworks over the Olympic stadium but The London Paper’s rather weaker ‘Let the games begin!’ was a pun short of a punchline. Meanwhile, the Lite sub was on a roll going B-listic in the caption with: Big bang: fireworks at the Bird’s Nest stadium in Beijing. Beauty.

1-0 to the Lite.

Should reporters write headlines? A retraction…

After the recent interesting debate on Twitter started by Joanna Geary of the Birmingham Post, I automatically took the subs’ side, as in: Oi Reporters! No! It’s us subs wot specialise in headline-writing, have the overview of page and picture, and the final angle on the story so leave off, alright!

But I’ve been duly humbled. Have just spent the morning chatting with a long-time friend and ex Fleet Street reporter and editor Terry Pattinson, who revealed he was the reporter behind a classic 1970s headline at the Express – the one where Crystal Palace centre forward Gerry Queen was sent off for violence. The header?

Queen in brawl at Palace

They sold a few thousand extra papers that day.

So… yes. While writers will continue to get uppity that ‘Subs think they’re so *&%^*$* clever…’ (Well duh!) But fair dues, the reporters have their moments. And, freakishly often on mags, the art team, too. One of our lovely designers at Eva magazine, now sadly defunct – the mag not the designer – came up with this top head for a spread of celebs arriving at airports:

The ego has landed

May the best headline win – whoever writes it. I do get annoyed when the job is taken over permanently, though. At certain women’s mags, the editor or even the features department have hogged the headlines. Why? Because although it’s a skill to write them, it’s also one of the best things about the job. So no wonder everyone’s trying to muscle in on the action.

Worst-ever subbing jobs 1

Just been reading Richard Burton’s recent posts. No, not that Richard Burton (t’would be difficult, he died in 1984 – I checked, hey I’m a sub, sue me!); but the other one, the former editor of telegraph.co.uk who’s been writing scary things about what subbing is all about.

His post highlighting the horrible turnaround times we lovely subs have to deal with in print reminded me of one of my worst subbing jobs ever: two weeks of casual shifts at the Birmingham Evening Mail. It was my first time on a daily and it was like jumping into a plunge pool – dive into the cold copy folder, sub it and get the hell out fast.

Bedtime for this evening paper had been pulled back to 9.30am so the first edition could hit newsagents by around 11am. Really it should have been renamed the Birmingham Brunch Mail.

All I remember is having 15 minutes to sub what seemed like the entire paper. It was the first time that I failed to read to the end of a story – just chop and hit file. If someone had written ‘c*nt’, ’sh*t on the Villa’ or some libellous low-blow in the final pars, I’d have missed it. For the first time, I felt shame at a job badly done.

But worse was to come. The pressure, the deadline, the rising heat, the blank mind, bodycopy blurring, staring at the story as the seconds ticked by trying desperately to think of a headline for a page 2 story about a picture of a murdered woman being released. Three decks, 36pt, one word on each line. I had to put something, anything. Slowly the Xxxxs turned into words as the chief shouted at me for the story. How I always remember my sharp, insightful summation of the story:

Murder
woman
picture

Thank god for the revise sub who changed it to something with a verb in. I brushed up on my newspaper vocab after that and can now write ‘Bus crash probe chaos’ type headers along with the worst of ‘em.