Can't anybody here play this game?

No, he didn't -- say "I likes where our team's going," that is. According to the story, he was barely in the same ballpark:

"We need to keep forging ahead. Keep making improvements. But I like where our team is headed." 

Since football is one of the few things the paper covers as next-day news* anymore, could we at least have checked the spelling of his name against the lede?

Jim Harbaugh's not ready to get "emotionally hijacked" just yet. 

Then there's the 1D cutline:

Michigan's Donovan Peoples-Jones celebrates his 79-yard punt-return touchdown in the third quarter Saturday against Army at Michigan Stadium.

The one with a slightly different photo on 2D repeats the Forbidden Verb, but at least it gets the opponent right:

Michigan's Donovan Peoples-Jones (9) celebrates after returning a punt 79 yards for a touchdown against Air Force on Saturday.

In case you missed the news last weekend: More or less as soon as the current contract allows, the Freep told its staff that it was moving design and copy editing to the Gannett hub (or "regional design studio") in Louisville. The War on Editing appears to have reached the stage at which the losing side is allowed to keep its horses for spring planting. The hub process might be inevitable. That doesn't mean we have to like it, but we can wish it looked more like a bad idea than an idea whose time has come.**

* It's at least a lesser sign of the apocalypse that the day's Tigers gamer was written by a stringer, not a staffer.
** Here's the Kid Rock paragraph online, if you're wondering how much attention the print edition gets: When the concert was announced, I didn't get upset about it. And I know why: Little Caesars Arena is a hockey arena. Many crowds over the years, I suspect, have been fans of performers like Kid Rock. I didn’t put his concert on my calendar.

Slouching toward visual journalism

If you got as far with Thursday's Freep as the jump shown here, you probably knew you were still in a story about refinancing student loans. You might nonetheless have wondered what the huddled masses in the photo had to do with a caption like "Lenders are looking at paychecks and degrees -- not for college dropouts and others struggling to make payments."

The photo appears to be cropped from an AP shot of Feb, 1, appearing at stltoday on March 14 with the caption "In this Wednesday, Feb. 1, 2017, file photo, Brooklyn College students walk between classes on campus in New York." Apparently, then, at least they're students; there's no indication whether any of them are carrying student loan debt,* or how much, though the image was used there and elsewhere to illustrate an AP story about student loan debt. It's also shown up at McClatchy, repurposed to illustrate coverage of New York's plan for tuition:

Well, at least Brooklyn's in New York. Hard to see a similar connection between a nearly three-month-old file photo and a large chunk of visual real estate in the healthier of the two Detroit papers, particularly when there's no indication of why we're seeing it.

I wouldn't cast this as fake news -- as photos tend to be, it's evidently true about something -- but it does make a lot of assumptions about the audience's interest in guessing games. If the press's crying need is to demonstrate its relevance, someone seems to have made a singularly dumb choice in illustrations here.

* If they had been, the AP caption would no doubt have read "Students carry loan debt as they walk between classes."

Stamp out 'celebrates'

Now that Christmas hasn't come early, can New Year's resolutions be far behind? Here's one you can practice on for the Super Bowl! No, it's not the idea of running nothing but columns on your front page (check it out: four stories, four photo logos). It's the cutline with the obligatory NFL story:

Detroit Lions safety James Ihedigbo celebrates the tackle on the Chicago Bears’ Matt Forte during first-half action on Sunday at Soldier Field in Chicago. The Lions won, 20-14, but it wasn’t pretty. Next week, they try to break a 23-year road losing streak in the state of Wisconsin. 

And the two on 6A:

Detroit Lions fans celebrate against the Chicago Bears on Sunday at Soldier Field in Chicago. But it was galling how the Lions’ self-inflicted mistakes kept an awful Bears team close, especially during the first half, when Detroit committed three turnovers. Matthew Stafford threw two interceptions, and a muffed punt gave the Bears hope.

Detroit* Lions receiver Golden Tate celebrates a first down during first-half action Sunday. The Lions’ 20-14 victory followed their trusted formula all season — plenty of luck and plenty of guts. 

And the versions in Miami and Charlotte, which at least put the story inside:

The Dolphins’ Terrence Fede, middle, celebrates after blocking a punt in the final seconds of Sunday’s game for a safety that helped Miami beat Minnesota, 37-35, at Sun Life Stadium. Despite officially being eliminated from playoff contention, team owner Stephen Ross said Joe Philbin would return in 2015 as Miami’s head coach.Story, 1D.

The Panthers’ Jonathan Stewart (28) celebrates his go-ahead touchdown catch with Cam Newton against Cleveland during the fourth quarter Sunday. Carolina (6-8-1) will play a winner-take-all game against the Falcons for the NFC South title Sunday in Atlanta. Newton ran for a touchdown and threw for another in his return from a car accident that sidelined him last week. More in Sports
 
I'm not all that fond of "celebrate" photos to begin with; I'd like to have at least as much action as reaction in the visual mix, and I think the emphasis on reaction reflects a larger Dick Vitale-ization of sports that takes some out of the fun out of watching. But at the least, we can ban "celebrate" on grounds of redundancy. Don't tell me what I'm seeing when you can tell me why I'm seeing it.

* And yes, by this point I have a pretty good idea of where the Lions play. If the "Detroit" on every first reference is a rule, let's get rid of that too.

Basics of editing: Forbidden verbs

Here's the basic cutline rule again: Don't tell me what I'm seeing. Tell me why I'm seeing it. Follow that rule and you'll never be tempted to write "celebrates" when you can write about what's being celebrated. If the touchdown was, as the game story contends, the most significant play of the first half, borrow that description: "Michigan's Devin Furness took a pass that appeared headed for a Penn State defender and walked it in for a 43-yard touchdown in the first quarter."

As for "shares a laugh with," just don't.

Worst active clause of the month

I'm sure this is all true. I have no doubt that a "For Sale" sign much like this one was standing outside a home, and that the home was in Princeton, Ill., and that the sign was standing there on Jan. 22. I'm a little confused about why any of that is relevant to the story on the business front in Detroit that it's illustrating in March.

Really. Wasn't it easier when we had cartoonists on staff to produce the requisite symbols?

Today in visual journalism

What is it about the Daily Mail? Maybe the conciseness of the heds:

Satellite data shows hijacked MH370 was last seen flying towards Pakistan OR Indian Ocean as investigators search pilots' luxury homes and reveal one had home-made flight simulator

... which, once you catch your breath, also offers seven bulleted decks, the last of which is worth noting:

Police raided the pair's luxury homes in upmarket Kuala Lumpur suburb

We have several shots of the co-pilot's alleged house, but none of the luxury home belonging to the pilot. Hence the photo above, captioned thus:

Shah's property would have looked similar to this one and is set in an estate which is said to be popular with high-income earners

Makes you miss the good old days of the Artist's Conception, doesn't it?

If 10 was 11

It's easy to put a foot, or a finger, wrong in trying to convert those pesky metric measurements to real American ones, but converting tons to tons does seem a bit like painting the lily -- especially when 10 turns out to be 11.

This one's fairly widespread, suggesting that it started with the AP.* Here's the version from the WashPost:

The trail of a falling object is seen above a residential apartment block in the Urals city of Chelyabinsk. A meteor that scientists estimate weighed 10 tons (11 tons) streaked at supersonic speed over Russia’s Ural Mountains on Friday, setting off blasts that injured some 500 people and frightened countless more.

I expect someone at the AP simply opened the stylebook to the metric conversion chart (p. 166) and followed the rule -- "Normally, the equivalent should be in parentheses after the metric figure" -- for converting metric tons to short tons. As Lawrence said of transliteration systems, that's really helpful if you already speak AP. The rest of the world is justified in being a little confused.

* Though it obviously persisted through the minimal sort of processing that agency copy gets these days at individual US websites; the screen grab from the N&O was provided by Strayhorn in the Triangle buro.

It's never too late

If you need an arbitrary point on the calendar at which to forswear evil and embrace good, too bad about the whole New Year thing. But there's still plenty of time to make an Old Christmas resolution -- for example, "I shall wash the Forbidden Verbs right out of my hair and send them on their way":

The Spartans celebrate a 33-30 victory over the University of Georgia at the Outback Bowl on Monday in Tampa. (1A)

Sacramento’s DeMarcus Cousins celebrates after scoring against the Los Angeles Lakers last week. He has since demanded a trade from the Kings. (2B)

Senior quarterback Kirk Cousins celebrates a fourth-quarter touchdown that gives Michigan State its first lead. He would lead another TD drive in the final minutes to force overtime. (1C)

MSU sophomore cornerback Darqueze Dennard celebrates one of his two third-quarter interceptions, this one for a 38-yard touchdown.(4C)

William Gholston celebrates after his fumble recovery in the second quarter. He also led MSU with seven solo tackles. (4C)

The Cowboys’ Markelle Martin celebrates after he recovered a fumble in the third quarter. (6C)

Writing is supposed to be at least a little bit difficult. Banning the Verb of Satan isn't much of a challenge, but it's a start.

Elongated Yellow Fruit award (rhomboids of frozen wet stuff division)

Dear desk: Having said "ice cubes" once, you could probably get away with "some" on second reference (and "given" rather than "parceled out," but who's counting?):

Senior Day volunteer Grady Evans hands out ice cubes to Sue Cass, 75, after having parceled out some of the cooling freebies to Royce Cheeseman, 83.

But under no circumstance should you call them "the cooling freebies." Got it?

While we're at it?

Jessica Allday, left, a visitor from England, experiences a day of baseball — not rounders or cricket — with friend Jessica Kittle of Dublin.

From her presence at a baseball game, yes. You can let your readers infer that she is watching baseball, "not rounders or cricket."

How not to write cutlines

A couple of general rules about the fine art of caption writing:

1) Be extremely wary of using a generic photo to illustrate a specific assertion. (The example from class last week is the correction on the order of: Um, you know that picture of big trucks we ran last week? With the Dope-Addled Truckers Menace Our Kids And Moms  story? Our lawyers want us to point out that we didn't mean to suggest that any of the companies whose trucks you could identify in that photo actually employ dope-addled truckers or anything!)
2) Use the present tense (hed-like) to talk about what's happening inside the frame, past tense for everything else. So if these rising sea levels aren't the climate-change-induced ones menacing these homes, find some other way to talk about it. Or -- here's an idea -- don't waste your time illustrating a syndicated column with a file staff photo.

There's a large, belligerent and well-financed body of people out there intent on destroying the credibility of climate change study and bullying The Meedja into submission whenever someone dares assert the obvious as a fact. Those people don't need our help. Let's avoid giving them any easy shots.

Gaudete! Michigan vincit

Brian raises a point below that's worth a post of its own -- as much fun as it would be to try a few "jubilate" cutlines, is there really a practical alternative to "celebrate" with sports photos? Not to answer a question with a question, but probably the best alternative is: Why do cutlines need verbs? Or more specifically, why do cutlines need verbs describing the stuff that -- at least, if you trust your lying eyes --is going on right there inside the frame for all to see?

Cutlines are one of the things the NYT consistently does well, and one reason is that NYT cutline writers are really good at sticking to one of my favorite precepts: Don't tell me what I'm seeing, tell me why I'm seeing it. So let's look at a few of today's NYT sports photos and what copy editors tell us about them. Conveniently, the lede college football photo is the same one that provided the first of the Freep's five "celebrate" sports cutlines:

Quarterback Tate Forcier, right, threw* a touchdown pass with 11 seconds left that helped Michigan take a big step forward after a 3-9 season last year.

Nice and informative -- one chunk of display type is complementing all the others. We don't know the name of the player hugging him, but maybe that's another rule we should question more often.**

Downpage is another classic of the genre -- a shouting athlete shaking hands with fans -- that usually ends up with a "celebrates with fans" or "shouts as he shakes hands with" cutline. Instead:

Houston's Case Keenum completed 32 of 46 passes for 366 yards and 3 touchdowns, including the winning score with 6:42 to play.

You can't always see whether a play is a success or a failure. In cases like that, you need to complement the image:

U.C.L.A.'s David Carter sacking Tennessee's Johnathan Crompton, who had 93 yards passing and 3 interceptions in the Volunteers' 19-15 loss.

But not all action photos need explaining:

Picking up in a second-set tie-breaker, Rafael Nadal completed a three-set victory over Fernando Gonzalez to reach the semifinals.

And particularly with archival photos, who says you need a verb at all?

Mickey Mantle and Willie Mays before the second game of the 1962 World Series.

What the Times is doing is basic, fundamental, hit-behind-the-runner desk work. It's making decisions one at a time and letting content drive them, rather than following an abstract rule about what an abstract modal caption looks like under a 30-year-old picture in a journalism textbook. That doesn't mean Times editing is always good. It means decisions you think about are almost always better than decisions you make by rote.

Is there a better verb than "celebrate"? No, but there's a better idea: Tell me why they're celebrating.

* Past tense for stuff that happened outside the frame.
** Certainly once you get out of state.

Season of the which?

Quick, what time of year is it downtown?

Michigan's Tate Forcier and Darryl Stonum celebrate Forcier's TD against the Irish. (1D)

They're wearing their hearts on their maize-and-blue sleeves. Some Michigan fans -- in the student section, maybe? -- celebrate a touchdown for the home team during the big 38-34 win over Notre Dame for Rich Rodriguez's Wolverines on Saturday. (2D)

Michigan head coach Rich Rodriguez and quarterback Tate Forcier celebrate after Forcier scored a touchdown against Notre Dame. (2D)

Wisconsin's Chris Maragos (21) and teammate Michael Harris celebrate Maragos' interception. (4D)

Dejected MSU player Greg Jones walks off the field at Spartan Stadium as CMU players celebrate Andrew Aguila's 42-yard field goal to win the game Saturday. (8D).

Not-quite-relatedly, further evidence that sports language has stood another verb on its ear, from the same section: "Paris Cotton catches a TD pass with 32 seconds left to put the Chippewas within one, 27-26. Defending him is MSU's Eric Gordon."

I haven't been keeping a file on this one (and not being Safire, I don't think it's a sign that the widening gyre* is getting even wider), but "defend" = "play defense against" seems pretty close to becoming standard on the sports pages. It sort of resembles a usage the OED calls obsolete, as in Holinshed's "Which walles greatlie defended the fire from spreading further." I don't like it, and I'd go to some lengths to keep it off my own pages, but language has a habit of not asking my permission to change.

"Celebrate," on the other hand, is just tedious. Please cut it out.

* Did you try the Polish sausage at the State Fair? The wurst are full of passionate intensity. Thanks, I'll be here all week.

Thanks, AP!

You don't have to do a lot to make an AP cutline better -- but you do have to do something. Sometimes you start by assuming that if the readers brought the paper in without getting run over, or turned on the computer without electrocuting themselves, they don't need to be told Obama's on the left.

Pin the prepositional phrase on ...

Today's quiz! Based on the cutline, where were:
1) The rampage
2) The party
3) The news conference?

The Basic Rule of news agency cutlines is: Never run 'em verbatim. They're annoyingly literal, meaning they often commit the offense of telling you what your eyes have already told you (be thankful, at least, that the cop isn't gesturing as he points as he reacts). They stack information without regard to how it might go together, so "rampage at a Christmas party during a news conference" is interchangeable with "news conference about a rampage at a Christmas party." And they always need to be tweaked for style; your archivist needs to know that the rampage/party/conference was "Thursday, Dec. 25, 2008," but for publication we call that one "Thursday."

All of which leaves aside the larger question: What's so interesting about a picture of a guy standing in front of a bunch of microphones? That's part of what a murder story looks like, just as "He was the nicest guy you could imagine. Always a pleasure to talk to, always a big smile"* is part of what one sounds like. Given that the Good Ship Journalism is still taking on water and we're looking for stuff to throw over the side, maybe this is a good time to dump a few assumptions about the nature and appearance of news.

* Optional: "He was kind of a loner. Always kept to himself."

Let the ... on second thought, don't

Time for another Emergency Verb Drop downtown? You make the call:

The Red Wings celebrate Valterri Filpulla's first-period goal Saturday night in front of Ottawa goalie Martin Gerber, right. (1D)

Toledo's Nick Moore (1) and his teammates on the sidelines erupt into a celebration* after Michigan missed a chance to tie Saturday's game at 13 with four seconds remaining. (1E)

Texas quarterback Colt McCoy celebrates with the Golden Hat Trophy after defeating Oklahoma, 45-35, on Saturday. (3E)

Michigan State free safety Dannny Fortener (33) and his teammates celebrate Fortener's 21-yard interception return Saturday against Northwestern. (5E)

You can't say it better than the hed on 6E:
Leading league in cliches is a good thing

* Honorary Verb status to this VP

When you care enough ...

It's the playoffs, so only the stalest will do!

Friday, 1C:
Henrik Zetterberg celebrates his third-period goal that gave the Wings a 2-1 lead.

Saturday, 1B:
Detroit's Henrik Zetterberg, right, celebrates his game-winning goal Thursday with Pavel Datsyuk.

Sunday, 1D:
Tomas Holmston, right, celebrates his goal with linemate Pavel Datsyuk.

Can't wait for Monday's sports section. On a streak, gotta respect the streak, right?

Forbidden verbs never go away

Sometimes you read your major metropolitan sports section and just wonder: How many more times?

Tiger Woods celebrates after sinking a 25-foot birdie putt on the final hole Sunday for the win. (2B)

Jeff Burton celebrates in victory lane Sunday after winning the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series Food City 500 in Bristol, Tenn. (7B)

Georgia's Corey Butler celebrates Sunday's 66-57 victory over Arkansas in the SEC final in Atlanta. (8B)

Temple's leading scorers, Mark Tyndale, left, and Dionte Christmas, celebrate upon learning of their matchup against Michigan State in the NCAA tournament. (9B)

MVP Dionte Christmas, left, celebrates after Temple beat Saint Joseph's for the Atlantic 10 title. (10B)

And this one's different, but it's hard to see how it's an improvement:
Mario Chalmers exults after scoring a three-pointer Sunday for Kansas, the top seed in the Midwest Regional. (11B)

In the broad, cosmic, let's-all-procrastinate-with-content-analysis sense, I wonder if the dominance of the "celebrate" photo isn't linked to some sort of broad ESPN-ization of sports journalism. It's no longer enough for games to have the fleeting moments of innate drama that actually make them fun to watch; now they have to be made iconic, and viewers have to be reminded every few seconds that what they're watching is something really special.*

As much fun as it would be to track the change in the modal sports photo from action to reaction, though, that's not the point. The point is that "celebrate" (like all its vile ilk) violates the Basic Rule of cutline writing: Never tell readers what they're seeing. Tell them what they aren't seeing. Everybody in your audience knows what the content of a "celebrate" photo means; they can't see what Mr. Woods just did, or what the basket being celebrated did to the score, or what sort of offense the defense overcame, or how much (or little) Mr. Burton won by. That's golden space under the photo. Spend it on something useful.

* Have you ever turned the closed-captioning on for a Dick Vitale telecast? Try it sometime!

Emergency verb drop request

You can help the sports copy desk at the Freep:

No. 1 seed Roger Federer reacts Saturday after beating No. 49 Janko Tipsarevic. (Saturday 3D).

Patriots quarterback Tom Brady reacts to teammate Laurence Maroney's rushing touchdown in the second quarter against the Chargers on Sunday. (Monday 1B).

Maryland's Greivis Vasquez celebrates the Terrapins' 82-80 win over top-ranked North Carolina at the Dean Dome on Saturday. (Sunday 11D).

Giants placekicker Lawrence Tynes, left, celebrates with teammate Michael Strahan after kicking the winning field goal in overtime Sunday night in Green Bay. (Monday 1B).

... or you can turn the page.

The torture never stops

Q: And how are things on the sports photo desk at certain large metropolitan dailies?
A: Glad you asked!

Things were heating up in Boiling Springs, N.C. on Thursday, where students celebrated little Gardner-Webb's big win Wednesday night in Kentucky's Rupp Arena. (2D Friday)

Dan Cleary, who tipped in a shot by Brett Lebda, background, celebrates after giving the Red Wings a 1-0 first-period lead over Columbus. (1B Saturday)

Lions holder and punter Nick Harris, left, watches as kicker Jason Hanson celebrates a field goal. (7B Saturday)

Illinois' Antonio Steele (40) celebrates his third-quarter interception with Justin Harrison. (3E Sunday)

Michigan State running back Jehuu Caulcrick celebrates the Spartans' 48-31 victory over Purdue with fans Saturday at Ross-Ade Stadium in West Lafayette, Ind. (5E Sunday)

Q: Wow! So it's pretty much Wait Till Next Year for all the other Forbidden Verbs?
A: Not so fast. When the going gets tough, the tough get going:
Allison Schmitt, right, shares a laugh with teammate Monica Blaesser during last year's Division 1 finals meet at Oakland University.

Q: Any early signals on the Forbidden Headlines front?
A: Yes.
Going bowling?
Hoyer leads Spartans to their 6th win
A quick reminder that the jaws of hell gape for "Bowled over" and all its minions and catamites.

Forbidden verb

Dear Freep desks: Enough with "celebrate." No more. Please. Ever.

Lions’ fans celebrate after Jason Hanson kicks the game-winning field goal in overtime against Minnesota at Ford Field on Sept. 16. (11/6, 8D)

Things were jumping at Ford Field on Sunday – like Lions wide receiver Shaun McDonald, who leaped to the front row to celebrate his third-quarter touchdown catch with fans. (11/5, 1A)

BLUE HEAVEN: Michigan’s Adrian Arrington and Marion Manningham celebrate the game-wining touchdown late in the fourth quarter – Chad Henne’s 31-yard pass to Manningham. (11/4, 1A)

Auburn Hills Oakland Christian goalkeeper Kramer Everett celebrates Wednesday’s win over Southfield Christian. (11/1, 1C)

Lions defensive end Dewayne White, left, celebrates his fourth-quarter sack with Cory Redding during Sunday’s game at Chicago. (10/29, 1D)

Cleveland’s Braylon Edwards (U-M) takes off his helmet to celebrate a 19-yard gain vs. the Rams. (10/29, 6B)

During happier times. MSU tailback Jehuu Caulcrick celebrated his touchdown in the first overtime. (10/28, 1E)