The fallout from sportswriting's filthiest @#$%-up

Man, photogs at my shop were our biggest problem.

One summer, in the middle of a 15-day stretch of 110 or hotter days, one filed a wild art of a local college student getting a drink from a garden hose. She was holding the hose vertically, water shooting out a couple of inches and the photog caught her with her head down over it, mouth wide open. I wasn't working that night, but the next day all anybody in the office could talk about was how we'd run an H2O-version of a money shot as a four-column wild art on the front page.

 

So much for accuracy being a defense.

Dodge Neon should be like "Nazi." Nothing you say bad about them should be off-limits.

 

"Championship" is one of mine. It always comes out "champinoship."

 

Tom Cox became Ton Cox in a story I wrote in college. I still get reminded of it when I visit.
I can still hear my adviser telling me, "Mr. Cox is saying, 'well, they ain't wrong.'"

 

If I had go cover the Olumpics, I would be in trouble.

 

At my first paper, a close college friend (she was in news) and I would often have the final, final check duties. Mostly, we'd sit around and shoot the shit until the guy -- name was Joe Bob, believe it or not -- would summon us back to the negative/plate-printing room. One night he came out awfully early. We didn't notice the smirk on his face. "Yep, everything looks good," we said. He started laughing. "You wanna look at A1 again?" My friend looked, and looked ... then gasped.

Right there, in color, was one of those cutesy feature photos of a middle-aged woman on a swing set, with her legs spread and her bush (through the panties) in clear view. How no one had noticed that I'll never know. Needless to say, my friend found herself setting the world speed record for a remake of A1.

 

This one hasn't come up yet, but it's a classic:
It's "Tyson Homosexual" in fourth place... Christian website's automated filter changes name of US sprinter

 

Think I've mentioned this one before.
Full-page retail display ad, years ago in the local.
Big art, big bold hed (72 pt.) and nobody caught it:

BOYS'
KNIT SHITS
75% OFF

 

This was the lowlight from early in my days proofing copy. SE meant to change "their" to "its" and you see the result.

 

A small weekly 30 miles away had this happen in its graduation edition. Probably about 10-20 of the 50 graduates had their name printed wrong. The shop said the proofed copy was clean but "something happened in the process of prepping the pages for printing." I'm guessing it was spellcheck, like in your story.

 

The paper in Winona, Minn., reportedly once had this headline over a prep girls basketball preview: "Cotter girls have holes to fill"

My second shop was a smaller daily (six on sports staff, which seems like a mid-major metro these days). Anyway, we did a weekly roundup of rec softball, based on scoresheets turned in by the teams. Our agate clerk wrote it up each week. One week, her lede was about how "Janey Jones saved the game with a perfect muff dive to snatch a hard shot." I caught it and had to explain what those things meant as she turned beet red. She lost a little faith in her fellow man that day.

Another one I caught at a different shop -- "Joe Smith, assistant editor of Playboy Magazine, will hold a pubic question-and-answer session ..."

A grocery ad flyer once had smallish display type offering ORE-IDA CRINKLE C*NT FRENCH FRIES

Speaking of red -- When I was doing layout with dummy type, I liked to make it red so it was difficult to miss. Only one system I ever used, early CCI, would not allow a page to be sent to plate with any dummy type on it. I liked that.

 

Graduation program from the LBJ School of Public Affairs from a few years ago.