DMN ... Backwards Score Giver

Mr. Bat, your lede is buried. How about the main hed: Hussein sentenced to death in Iraq. I thought maybe they had moved the trial to Texas or something.

 

Yeah, I cringed at that too.

I thought the DMN was trying out the British style of score-giving where the home team is first win, lose or draw, but that doesn't work because the game was at FedEx.

 

Except within Texas, change is all around. </wapo editor>

 

Former
DA in sex
sting kills
himself


Does the split on this one bother anyone as much as it bugs me?

 

As a takeoff on the WaPo headline thread, perhaps it should have read:

In Iraq, Hussein sentenced to death.

 

Yup.

What about:

Former DA
in sex sting
kills himself

However, I'm assuming that's too wide for one column.

 

Looking at the layout, all you had to do is widen the rightmost column a pica or maybe two at most and the hed would've fit fine. The Saddam centerpiece (24 hours hold by the time it hit your porch) would've dominated the page regardless.

But I couldn't fight through the backwards score (so, moddies, please don't banish this to the design thread.)

 

Methinks they still believe that if it doesn't happen in Texas, then it doesn't happen.

And the backwards score makes me cringe as I think of goofy volleyball coaches state-wide.

Coach: "Yes, I have the results of Podunk's volleyball game against Misfitz. It was 5-25, 25-10, 10-25."

Me: "Um, so Podunk lost?"

Coach: "Yeah, we had them, too. The girls tried so hard, but they left it all on the court."

Me: ???

 

The news side of the DMN apparently has a lot of fans still in denial over that last play. Score probably wasn't written by a sports desker. They have too much pride to reverse the score like that.

 

My thoughts, too. Some designer/copy editor/hed writer has the dirty hands on that one. Probably a mom who also calls in her kids game scores the same way.

 

We had a guy on the newsroom copy desk write an A1 teast for one of the nearby universities (which he attended) that said:

Local U 21
Non-local U 42

We told him that was wrong but he said the local team always goes first. We also had a sports columnist once write "Podunk High lost 5 to 3 in baseball ..." Nice, eh?