Since the headline doesn't refer to anyone in the story -- no one expresses desperation in this light rewrite of a prepared city council agenda -- and since the headline doesn't fulfill the requirements of a grammatical English sentence, and since it misprepresents the story, readers can consider themselves officially irrelevant. It's the copy desk's need to be cute that counts. It's the desk's need to show she/he has seen a 23-year-old grade B movie that matters. That's just plain desperate.
Tuesday, December 16, 2008
Desperately Seeking Cute Trumps Accuracy
Since the headline doesn't refer to anyone in the story -- no one expresses desperation in this light rewrite of a prepared city council agenda -- and since the headline doesn't fulfill the requirements of a grammatical English sentence, and since it misprepresents the story, readers can consider themselves officially irrelevant. It's the copy desk's need to be cute that counts. It's the desk's need to show she/he has seen a 23-year-old grade B movie that matters. That's just plain desperate.
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Actually the copy editor is onto something.
ReplyDeleteExcept we need to change one word. Should read, Desperately seeking journalists (real ones — not ones the play journalists at "newspapers" owned by SCMG.