Editors' Blog | Journalism.co.uk » Funny

A drift of swine: 30,000 pigs take to the water, reports the Morning Bulletin

Joel Gunter — Fri, 11 Feb 2011 16:08:55 +0000

A correction from Monday’s edition of Australia’s Morning Bulletin. I’m pretty sure that it’s my favourite correction of all time.

Hatip: @substuff on Rantings of a sub-editor.Similar Posts:

Journalism’s own goals and gaffes 2010

Joel Gunter — Thu, 23 Dec 2010 12:52:08 +0000

Making light of others’ mistakes is fraught with danger, and will often come back to haunt you when you make your own.

But that doesn’t stop us or anybody else, it seems. Schadenfreude is all the rage. So, here are just a few of our favourite own goals and gaffes from 2010, in no particular order. We would include some of our own but we don’t make any, obviously… Please feel free to add any you remember in comments or on Twitter to @journalismnews.

1. Telegraph cocks-up Hadron headline

One of those errors in which the sub concentrates so hard on not making one particular mistake that they make exactly that mistake. Either that, or it’s Friday afternoon and they think a good laugh is worth the grief sure to follow.

Screenshot by Skepchick on Flickr

2. Times Online caught up in awkward byline scandal

Not really a scandal this, I suppose, or an outright error, but we think it qualifies as gaffe to put Roger Boyes on your Catholic Church-boys choir-sex abuse story. Dear the Times, he may be your Vienna correspondent, but perhaps he shouldn’t be.

3. Brighton Argus’ new out-of-town subs fall at the first hurdle

Following weeks of protest over Newsquest laying off local subs at the Brighton Argus and centralising news subbing 60 miles away in Southampton, the out-of-towners made a slight mistake on their first day.

Rumour has it that the following day – and I kid you not – the paper almost went to print calling itself “the Argos”. Although not on the masthead, we understand. Unfortunately for this list, it got caught just in time. Allegedly.

4. Slow news day in Ohio?

The story that has it all.

5. Sun runs explosive advert with Moscow terrorist bombings story

Advert placement has been a rich source of gaffery in the past, but back in March the Sun used all the technological wizardry available to it to launch this advertising cock-up into a league of its own

6. Headline mishaps continue at Johnston Press and Newsquest titles

Speaking of rich sources of gaffery, to the notorious content management system from Atex. This tremendous CMS, dear to the hearts of regional journalists up and down the country, has caused so many headline and image mishaps that we would be remiss not to include a sample. Don’t miss an insightful standfirst and pull quote either.

7. Wanky Balls festival: Wikipedia-reading journalists welcome

Much fun was had back in August when someone at the Indy was caught red-handed pilfering from Wikipedia. Many, many journalists must have done it, but this unlucky one happened to plagiarise some, well, total wanky balls.

Image courtesy of Political Scrapbook.

Hannah Waldram has kindly pointed out that in our haste we missed a rather recent, rather spectacular double gaffe from Jim Naughtie and Andrew Marr. Although we undoubtedly missed many on our short list, we feel that Messrs Naughtie and Marr definitely deserve a place.

Here is Naughtie introducing the culture secretary with flawless anunication….

…and Andrew Marr trying to beat him at his own game:

Merry Christmas subs, editors and reporters everywhere, keep up the good work!

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Insert pun here…

Laura Oliver — Mon, 06 Sep 2010 10:41:50 +0000

This is without doubt a very serious crime story from WeAreCentralPA.com, but the headline did cause a childish giggle:

(via Common Sense Journalism)Similar Posts:

Read the headline, got the T-shirt

Laura Oliver — Mon, 07 Jun 2010 08:09:04 +0000

Thursday’s front page headline gaff in the Mid-Bedfordshire Times & Citizen was popular Twitter fodder last week.

Now @citizenbb, one of the first tweeters to post the picture, has turned “headline headghgh” into a T-shirt…

Full post at this link…Similar Posts:

Dave Lee: Cunning stunt targets BBC webcam

Laura Oliver — Wed, 04 Feb 2009 13:05:19 +0000

Some juvenile humour on the BBC Nottingham webcam, just to lighten the mood.

Full story at this link…Similar Posts:

Overheard something humorous in your newsroom?

Nigel Brown — Mon, 19 Jan 2009 12:07:20 +0000

They say the first few weeks after Christmas are the most depressing days of the entire year. So as you sit hunched over your keyboard nursing a steaming mug of mud-like coffee, you might welcome the odd spot of workplace banter.

If your office fails to bring such joy, then check out ‘Overheard In the Newsroom’ (thanks to Sports Designer for pointing this out).

It does exactly what it says on the tin, bringing interesting and humorous comments made by newsroom colleagues direct to your desktop. Stunners like number 70: “Sure wish we knew what the hell we’re talking about” are sure to resound with every demotivated reporter in a mid-Monday slump.Similar Posts:

US elections: CNN’s ‘magic map’ gets spoofed on Saturday Night Live

Laura Oliver — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 16:34:21 +0000

While reviewing the best online coverage of election day, CNN’s press office dropped us a line about the ‘magic board’ – a map of the states which will be used by presenter John King to show the results and forecasts as they come in.

For anyone who loves/loathes a good swing-o-meter, here’s Saturday Night Live’s take on it:
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‘Making light of a bad situation’ – CNN report gets pranked by kissing couple

Laura Oliver — Tue, 16 Sep 2008 11:15:49 +0000

A CNN report from outside collapsed investment bank Lehman Brothers was on the receiving end of a prank from the Howard Stern show yesterday.

In an unlikely segue, the channel’s anchor said the two men kissing in the background of the live report were ‘obviously trying to make light of a bad situation, pretending to “console each other” out there’.

According to the New York Observer, the pair ‘making out’ were in fact Stern Show employees Richard Christy and Sal Governale.

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Bloomberg runs false obituary for Apple’s Steve Jobs

Judith Townend — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 16:51:38 +0000

The death of Apple founder and CEO Steve Jobs was prematurely announced yesterday afternoon by Bloomberg.

A pre-prepared stock obituary was accidentally posted to Bloomberg’s corporate client wire service, even through the story was marked ‘Hold for release – Do not use’.

It was quickly spotted by a user, and sent to Gawker.com, where the obituary can still be read in full.

Bloomberg was quick to retract the story, and yesterday published a message on its wire saying: “An incomplete story referencing Apple Inc. was inadvertently published by Bloomberg News at 4:27 p.m.New York time today.”

At Telegraph.co.uk Matthew Moore reports: “The stock obituary was published ‘momentarily’ after a routine update by a reporter, and was ‘immediately deleted’, Bloomberg said.”

According to Moore, ‘Jobs has been reluctant to publicly discuss his health, but recently denied claims that his cancer [from which he has previously suffered] had returned’.Similar Posts:

Sky News on Georgia – let’s start with a geography lesson…

Laura Oliver — Mon, 11 Aug 2008 15:58:43 +0000

Sky News’ online section ‘Georgia In Depth’ is an aggregation of pictures, articles and info about the eastern European country, which borders with Russia, as part of coverage of the current conflict in the region

So that’s the Georgia between sandwiched between Europe and Asia and not the US state then?

If you’re going to use Wikipedia, at least get the right entry. Thank goodness for the disclaimer… it’s no one’s fault!

(Also, why does the site publish Wikipedia excerpts at all if, as the disclaimer suggests, Sky News has little faith in their accuracy?)Similar Posts:

An aggregation of aggregators: Journalism.me and Crowdstatus.com

Laura Oliver — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 14:07:41 +0000

Two new aggregation sites have been set up: Kiyoshi Martinez’s Journalism.me and Darren Stuart’s CrowdStatus.com.

Martinez, who is also responsible for Angy Journalist, is using the site to aggregate feeds from a host of bloggers, news sources, journalism job sites and training centres.

CrowdStatus.com lets a user specify a group or ‘crowd’ of Twitter users and then aggregates their updates on one page. It only works with Twitter at the moment, but Stuart plans to add Facebook updates and Seesmic vids.

On a completely different note (boom,boom!) for anyone who hasn’t come across JournalRhythm, it needs no more explanation than – it’s news to a beat…Similar Posts:

Giles Coren moves his rant onto Twitter…

Laura Oliver — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 15:06:54 +0000

First it was fellow reviewer Feargus O’Sullivan, then it was The Times’ subbing team that felt the wrath of food critic Giles Coren (thanks to MediaMonkey for the links).

Now someone doing a good impression of the writer has popped up on Twitter to bring Coren’s unique brand of swearing to the microblogging masses.

(For those of you who don’t like bad language, look away now)

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A lesson in SEO from Charlie Brooker

Laura Oliver — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 15:40:21 +0000

Following the surge of comments generated by Charlie Brooker’s Comment is Free article, he’s asking this week what impact search engine optimisation could have on the quality of journalism online.

To take his point to the extreme Brooker gives us a fully SEO-ready article complete with celebrity names, certain pharmaceutical brands and political links (I’d mention them by name but that would start a kind of SEO vicious circle for this post).

As one commenter points out, Brooker’s got it spot on – at the time of writing his article occupies the top five slots when you Google the key SEO terms shown below:

Jokes aside – Telegraph.co.uk’s Shane Richmond has given us some insight into the site’s SEO strategy, would be good to hear what might be going on with the Guardian.Similar Posts:

The dangers of automated subbing…

Laura Oliver — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 11:54:03 +0000

I’m late coming to this posting on Regret the Error (which I found through Dave Lee’s blog), but it’s too good not to post.

Site OneNewsNow – part of the American Family News network – has a filter set up that automatically substitutes the word ‘gay’ in copy for ‘homosexual’.

When some Associated Press copy came in about US Olympic hopeful Tyson Gay it was all a bit much:

“Tyson Homosexual easily won his semifinal for the 100 meters at the U.S. Olympic track and field trials and seemed to save something for the final later Sunday. . . Asked how he felt, Homosexual said: ‘A little fatigued’.”

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Outgoing Post journalist leaves secret message to readers

Laura Oliver — Wed, 28 May 2008 12:38:11 +0000

USA Today’s OnDeadline blog has picked up on a secret message from outgoing Washington Post journalist Linton Weeks.

Weeks is one of over 100 staff who have accepted buyouts at the paper.

(Need a clue: look at the opening of each par)Similar Posts: