Hah. Buck spent the last five years or so writing for a UK publication, and rolling his eyes about the dirty jokes they'd put in his headlines. The segment of the computer industry he writes for is largely conservative middle-aged men in Middle America, and they (apparently) want their market analysis dry and dignified, and email him to complain when things get blue.
When I worked as production editor on my high school newspaper I often had to fill in headlines. Obviously I made them all double entendres. Anybody would!
conservative middle-aged men in Middle America . . . complain when things get blue.
This seems contrary to stereotypes.
God knows what they read in their spare time, but according to Buck, they prefer their market analyses clean.
When I edited the high school newspaper, I put in a picture of the entire junior and senior classes on a school bus (small school) flipping the bird to the camera. It got past the editor and the principal, but the printer noticed.
We had a front page make Leno headlines: Ho, Clinton to Address Graduates at Largest Commencement Ever
On the other extreme of headline writing, there was a recent morning where my hometown paper used the excessively banal "Studies to Be Conducted" as its banner headline.
Were they *worthwhile* studies? Worthwhile *Canadian* studies?
It did remind me of the allusion in 8 as well.
In practice, the subheadline and a category marker were enough to show what the subject was, given local context, but - appropriately enough - it didn't stick in my memory at all.
1,4: Assuming it's the one I am thinking of, plenty of readers appreciated them as well. They just didn't wirte to him about that (but yeah, the audience for his main area probably tended towards the quotidian-minded).
I played it mostly straight when doing officially sanctioned events. I did an unofficial 'zine that made both high schools in my town rather angry.
Probably the dumbest thing we did was to insert "God does not care" into the handout for graduation. This was bible-belt, 1987. Pretty sure my principal had a good idea that either I or my co-conspirator was responsible, but we were good students. Going on to get exchange student scholarships and placement at expensive schools probably made her feel better.
And I did learn how to keep a straight face when confronted with an angry redneck, which, thankfully, isn't a skill I've had to employ much since then.
Putting headlines next to ostensibly unrelated pictures is a fine art of subbing... this kind of thing, for example.
http://www.holdthefrontpage.co.uk/2013/funnies/winnie-the-pooh-violent-criminal/
My favorite was when my college's daily ran a story about High Administrative Mucky-Muck X having hired High Administrative Mucky-Muck Y: BROAD WELCOMES HOOKER TO CAMPUS.
My favorite was when my college's daily ran a story about High Administrative Mucky-Muck X having hired High Administrative Mucky-Muck Y: BROAD WELCOMES HOOKER TO CAMPUS.
My favorite headline of all time.
http://www.dailyutahchronicle.com/?p=20945
That is good, but the goodness isn't coming from the creativity of the editor.
Right, that's not really the same sort of phenomenon as these other ones.
16. Of course.
I was wondering what all that was in response to. Good Lord. You really set them off! The editors must have been laughing up their sleeves.
Oh, here was another good headline:
http://www.dailyutahchronicle.com/?p=21233
19 is mine. Grrr.
Something keeps adding a cookie block for this site to my Firefox list of exceptions (allow/block). I go in and remove the block and it comes back. Since I am not doing this intentionally, I am annoyed and puzzled.
Those were good times. It's unlikely I'll troll with that level of success ever again.
21: It's even funnier when you check back to the earliest letter you wrote ("Church blows so you don't have to")
What is this paper, and when did the immortal correspondence appear?
This was back in '04 or '05. It's the school paper for the University of Utah. Hardcore Mormons would write these letters to the editor complaining about stupid shit like R rated movies being shown on campus. I had a conversation with someone at the paper asking them why the hell they were giving these people a platform and the reply was that their policy was to publish all letters to the paper. I set out to make them regret that policy.