This is why you don't put jokes on the page

Sports Guy,

I once had a high school game story that went over six columns in the cut and paste days and every column was in the wrong place.

Good times.

 

I would go apespit (can't say what I really mean because I'm at work) on those copy editors if that happened to my copy. There would be no apology I could ever accept for effing up copy that way.

 

I hope I don't out myself so I will keep this vague but on my college paper, the editor in cheif put my photo and wrote a joke column with my byline as an April Fool's prank. I received a lot of blowback and still had to threaten a lawsuit to get a retraction.

I was fired the same day the retraction ran

 

Wait, what? Why were you fired?

 

For making a stink and making the editor in chief look bad. She and the managing editor got extremely vindictive about it, to the poit of creating a fake Facebook account (this was when FB was college only).

Finally the academic advisor had to bring the wrath of God but it was so close to the end of the year there was no time to fire them (next year's staff had already been hired) and all they missed was the opportunity to be at the end of year banquet.

If it matters, both of then have respectivle jobs in the industry and I have...well, read my post history. In fairness, it isnt their fault

 

What was the gist of the column? To receive blowback and threaten a lawsuit, it had to be something pretty bad.

 

If it was an April Fool's column, I'm sure it was bad. Those have a unique history in college newspaper lore.

 

Ancient history, yes. Back when we got our first computers, the workflow still was to type stories on copy paper, give it to the desk to edit, then on to an "inputter" who retyped it into the computer system. Our outdoors writer -- a hunting and fishing expert -- submitted his column about some hunting trip. The inputter added a sentence near the bottom. Something like: And when you meet your maker how will you answer for transgressions against nature.
Of course, the proofreaders didn't notice it because all the words were spelled correctly. The inputter was fired the next day.

 

Heck, Bobby Petrino is still a college football coach in Kentucky (Louisville), and Quin Snyder is once again a basketball coach, this time in the NBA. If I were either of those so-called "journalists," I would leave the Kentucky job off my resume' and move to another state, if I really wanted to stay in the journalism field ...

 

But I certainly wouldn't want either to land a copy editor job where I work. Trust issue.