The Flatlining of Dead Tree News
Newspapers falling like dominoes seems to be one of the themes of the year, not unlike the 2 or so banks per week handed over the the FDIC. It never seems quite real until one thing just crystallizes it all.
And this is it. Just go see what squeezing every last dollar out of a once awfully good paper looks like.
Tags: Media
OMG!
The future is here. I hope bloggers are up for it.
In almost 20 years in the print media, I’ve seen mistakes like that on occasion. To see newspapers dying this rapidly increasing death makes me said.
Another: I’ve seen ONE subhead like that, but a whole column? That column went to press without a copy editor looking at it.
If you read the comments at the link, someone makes a good point: Once upon a time, when the proof pages came up from pre-press, editorial would have put a stop on the page until it could be fixed — especially with the whole column missing its heds and a cutline. That ultimately costs money, though, so they went to press with this anyway.
In other words, it’s bad enough that the mistake happened. What’s much worse is that they decided to save money by not fixing it.
Geezer,
They could save even more money by laying off everyone except ad sales and printing:
“Sed ut perspiciatis unde omnis iste natus error sit voluptatem accusantium doloremque laudantium, totamunt. Neque porro quisquam est, qui dolorem ipsum quia dolor sit amet, consectetur, adipisci velit, sed quia non numquam eius modi tempora incidunt ut labore et dolore magnam aliquam quaerat voluptatem. Ut enim ad minima veniam, quis nostrum exercitationem ullam corporis suscipit laboriosam, nisi ut aliquid ex ea commodi consequatur? Quis autem vel eum iure reprehenderit qui in ea voluptate velit esse quam nihil molestiae consequatur, vel illum qui dolorem eum fugiat quo voluptas nulla paria
…in every edition.
Or just:
“Copy goes here” and leave a lot of blank space. That way they save on ink too.
If newspapers die, corruption will further flourish:
http://www.tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=a4e2aafc-cc92-4e79-90d1-db3946a6d119
Survival of the national papers will not help us on a local scale. The Inquirer and Daily News fell Philadelphia politicians, not USA Today nor even the Times.
Sad to say, but all it would take are two people screwing up. It’s not necessarily emblematic of a massive failure – this could happen very, very easily. Step one is the page designer forgetting to ship the file to the copy editors. Step two is the responsible copy editor or copy desk chief forgetting to check a page proof. Two tiny mistakes in the heat of deadline, and voila – subhed large!
At smaller papers, where the same single person is responsible for designing a page, writing headlines and captions and editing copy, it happens far more frequently. The idea of full-time proofreaders at all newspaper sizes is a distant memory.
In defense of copy editors, many of whom I count as my friends, today they’re asked to do a lot more than they did back in the Golden Age. They have to edit stories, write headlines, write photo captions, design pages, do as much fact-checking as time allows, edit page proofs, post Internet updates, design online photo galleries and edit and post video. And still make deadline so as to not lose the paper any money.
Insert pithy comment here
The Philadelphia Inquirer runs more than one edition, an early print one which goes to the outlying areas — which just happens to be the one I get, living out in the boondocks as I do. My question is: does The Los Angeles Times have early and late pres runs, and, if so, was this caught and fixed for the later run?
That’s a good question, Dana. Does anyone know?
I cringe in sympathy for the LAT. How embarrassing for them.
After posting this item on lies.com, I emailed Kevin Drum about it, and he mentioned that the same error was in his Orange County (California) edition as was in my Ventura/Santa Barbara edition. So I’m not sure about early vs. late, but it at least was messed up through a large swath of Southern California.