Monday, January 11, 2016

Look at the nameplate, please

In the Good Old Days, you could at least expect the people who wrote the headlines to have read the morning's* paper before showing up for work. Thus, they'd know not just the specifics (whether the leader of Freedonia was a "president" or a "dictator") but the broad details that enabled success in the journalism business: a mere glance at the top of the front page could tell you not only what year it was, but which fount of knowledge (in which city) you were supposed to arrive at for the day's labor. So, for the folks downtown who thought all this would magically show up on their phones, a few reminders:

  • This state is called "Michigan"
  • This month is called "January"
  • "Winter" technically began three weeks ago
  • Granted, I'm kind of the new guy (this is my ninth winter here**), but preliminary observation is starting to suggest that nobody even thinks of putting those snow shovels away before they put their damn tomatoes in. Sheez

It's early days in a presidential election year; we could be looking at another 10 months of "X Trumps Y," notwithstanding all the times the gloves will come off or go on during the primary season. Let's try to avoid closing the Stupidest Headline competition before most j-schools even start classes, shall we?

^ Or the previous day's; the majority of American dailies were pyems into the late 1990s. Weekday morning circulation didn't exceed weekday afternoon circulation until the early 1980s.
** Though Language Czarina and her mom were both born in Detroit proper.

1 Comments:

Blogger Peter Spearing said...

I know I'm late to the party, but this year "X Trumps Y" is either a very entertaining or a very poor choice, depending.

12:12 PM, June 09, 2016  

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