Messing up in the newspaper world
I noticed in the state and local section of the Monday Wichita Eagle that an article about Kansas University had a word misspelled in the headline: "KU officials 'scrutize' cadaver donations." I love it when that happens to the big papers, especially in this day and age with spell-check built into every computer.
Sometimes I would like to clip out those gaffs and post them in my office. But that would be a heap of bad karma and the next messy headline would no doubt be mine. A cousin recently e-mailed me a list of goofy headlines and advertisements from 2003. I guess she thought I would find it amusing. I scanned the list quickly to see if any of mine were on it. Thank goodness nothing looked familiar.
I expect most people in this business live in fear of being presented to the world on David Letterman's show with a big stinko headline or advertising mistake. How awful.
Several years ago the Mister ran an ad with a big Public Auction heading in the weekly county freebie paper. We were pleased that they at least spelled "Auction" correctly, though they left the "l" out of the word "Public." I guess they didn't notice since we never got an apology or an explanation.
Sports writers seem to have really nifty headlines and I always wonder how they dream up that stuff. I can never think of anything clever to put atop Janet Post's sports stories. "Warriors win one," "Warriors lose two," "Lady Warriors split two games," a real snooze-fest if you ask me. I'm not sure what we could do with a Teuton, but we could probably skin some Cougars or fell some Eagles. Maybe make some Cardinals eat worms. Trouble is I never think of those words until the paper is out and I look at the headlines and think, "Shoot, why didn't I 'scrutize' that a little better?"
Oh well, the main thing is to stay off of Letterman. First rule: never use the word "public" in a headline. See? I HAVE learned some stuff.
— SUSAN MARSHALL
