Bong Bull

Bong Bull 538

BONG Bull, written and copyrighted by Charley Stough, is reprinted at US Newspapers with permission of the author, who retains all rights.

For Oct. 15, 1999. What's all the griping about Ronald Reagan's biography containing fictitious parts? No one in the Reagan White House complained for eight years, notes the Burned-Out Newspapercreatures Guild, and this is BONG Bull No. 538!

EMPLOYMENT TEST. Here are tips for managing editors on how to put new talent to work in the jobs that match their talents. First, place the prospective employee in a room alone. After two hours, return.

If the prospect has turned the chair cushions inside out and rehung all the pictures on the wall, he or she goes to Lifestyle.
If the books on the shelves are re-stacked according to the Dewey Decimal System, meet the new morgue chief.
If the prospect is talking in his sleep, you have a new editorial writer.
If the prospect is captivated by your lava lamp, you have a new theater reviewer.
If the prospect has eaten the contents of the ashtray and wastebasket, it's a food writer.
If the prospect has gleaned 80 cents out of the sofa, he's an investigative reporter.
If the prospect is waving his arms wildly and talking to himself, he's a copy editor.
If the room has a sweaty odor, it's a sportswriter.
If the prospect has done absolutely nothing for two hours, he's management material.
If he doesn't even look up when you enter the room, send him to the computer room.
If the lights are out, he's a photographer.
If the prospect has done absolutely nothing for two hours, fire him. He wants to be managing editor.

WHY JOURNALISTS JUST LAUGH WHEN ANYONE SAYS 'QUALITY CONTROL.' Whit Andrews <whit@pobox.com> of Internet World leads off this week's gaffe collection with, "I was at the Norfolk Virginian-Pilot when i happened, in 1987. A man had been evicted from his home, and was sitting in an armchair in his front yard. He was clearly profoundly dejected. The cutline below the picture explained what had happened:

He had mortgaged his house and lent the money to a relative, who then was unable to pay it back. This was of course a poignant revelation of the human condition. Unfortunately, the snippet of text which was to be replaced with the cutline hed remained in place above the photo. It said: 'Dummy Head.'"

Nuna Alberts <NunaC@aol.com> recalls, "In the '80s, when I was a reporter at the Gannett Suburban Newspapers (now the Journal News) in Westchester County, N.Y., we ran a story headlined something like "NYC Names New Police Chief," only instead of Lee Brown, the headshot was of James Brown. You can imagine the field day the NYC tabs had with that.... Nearly half a dozen people signed off on the page before it went to print."

Pris Sears <skinfaxi@bellatlantic.net> sayeth: "The year was 1996. In the last edition before classes let out for the summer, the Virginia Tech Collegiate Times printed a story about Sharon Yeagle, assistant to the vice president for student affairs. The cutline under her picture identified her as the school's 'director of butt licking.' Editor Katy Sinclair told the Associated Press that the mistake resulted from the paper's use of dummy copy stored in its computer system. Strangely, the CT had 'accidentally' given the same title to the associate dean of the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences on Oct. 7, 1995."

Andy Jukes <andy_jukes@sunshine.net> declares, "I work as production manager at a small weekly newspaper (The Coast Independent), and I've got a couple, totally true: At the Gibsons (B.C., Canada) Coast News, local government decided to dead-end a local lane that was becoming a shortcut to the other part of town for savvy drivers. It was named Bals after a town father. The editor, bless his heart, ran the hed "Council votes to cut off Bals."

And in a twist on the Don't Typeset It As A Joke Unless You're Prepared To See It In Print Dept., when I worked at the Whistler (B.C.) Question, the Vancouver CBC-TV affiliate used our gaily-festooned production plant as a backdrop for an interview with our highly-regarded ski-racing columnist. (Yes, some mountain towns have such a thing as a ski-racing columnist.) Later, while watching him on TV, I was shocked, mortified and sort of secretly delighted to see five words I had set some months before, 'Big Fuckin Plug Right Here,' casually pasted on the wall behind him."

Larry Lorenz <lorenz@loyno.edu> asserts: "In a display ad in the Kansas City Star in 1971, Chasnoff, a women's shop, touted 'Those great wearable ... washable ... packable polyester pantshits you love! Nine styles in ten vibrant colors.'"

Lorenz also claims he has clips to prove that an ad appeared in the Indianapolis Star of Dec. 5, 1970, after some labor troubles at the paper, offering oral sex any Friday or Saturday, with a phone number that turned out to be the publisher's.

Pat Washburn <patw@portland.com> avers, "I still cherish a page from my former employer, the Middlesex News (Framingham, Mass.). A local story offered the gruesome tale of a man who had been charged with killing and cooking his roommate's kitten. Beneath it someone had filled with a house ad: 'Do you like to cook? Read Market Basket every Wednesday.'"

Aaron Headly <Aaron_Headly@baseview.com> reports, "Here's a pretty common twist to the old caption-swap problem -- hiding the caption below the fold. My favorite was in Catskill N.Y. at the Daily Mail, where I was installing a new pagination system. The photo was of a fire burning in the distance with a bunch of cars parked on the side of the road in the fore, but the caption, about a barn burning down, was below the fold (a common problem now that editors do their own typesetting). The big story next to the photo was hedded:'Locals up in arms over new parking meters.'"

Shane F. Iseminger <shane@ethosmedia.com> recalls, "I think I submitted this to your newsletter a few years ago when it actually happened, but with the recent topic of bad cutlines, why not have at it again: Shortly after I left my position as photographer at the campus rag at Colorado State University (it was going downhill quickly), one morning the usual standalone feature photo on the front page was of a golf player putting on the town golf course. I can just imagine the photographer asking for their names and how hard it must have been for them to keep a straight face when they answered. The photographer -- not to mention the section editor and copy editors -- didn't catch on to the false names they gave: the caption read "Brett Hull (not pictured) and Craven Moorhead ..."

Chris Sigurdson <sig@aes.purdue.edu>, PR guy at Purdue University's School of Agriculture, defends, "The flipped caption phenomonen has its televised equivalent. When I worked for Channel 3 News, Bryan-College Station, in the 80s (KBTX-TV,"Deep In the Heart of the Brazos Valley,") the production crew unfortunately got two videotapes out of order in the evening newscast, and as the anchor read "Texas A&M University intensifies its search for a new president," viewers were treated to pictures of county police officers hammering on the door of a trailer home notorious in the community as a place of prostitution."

Bill Blessington <bbless@sinbad.net> claims, "The Fairbanks News-Miner in 1975 had a great pair of lines: "Chicken Man Charged In Murder" regarding a shootout between two gold miners in the rowdy town of Chicken, Alaska, and "Women Eat Bad Beaver, Die" referencing local chef's error in sterilizing the spatula.

Mark Bell <bell@world.std.com> observes that the crew in Boston has become extremely conscious of factuality since those New York Times auditors started hanging around. On Sept. 4, 1999, a color photo in the Boston Globe showed a man in a suit sitting in a chair.

Also in the shot were three TV cameramen, cameras on their shoulders, dressed in the mandatory TV cameraman-casual. The cutline: "MIT President Charles M. Vest (sitting) at yesterday's news conference."

Retired Texas editor Dub Brown <dub42435@netscape.net> offers, "My alltime favorite newspaper screwup occurred in the late 1950s when a Wink, Texas, weekly advertised shirts in about 120-point bold display type. The only problem was they left out the "r," but what really lifted it out of the realm of the ordinary typo was they came back with a Page 1 box in the next edition saying they were glad their ads were so well read."

Another Texan, Barry D. Sharp <Barry.Sharp@tdh.state.tx.us> was away from his job with the Alvin (Texas) Sun-Advertiser in the Crescent City c. 1987 when the New Orleans Times-Picayune ran a murder story on the front page: "Ghost kills mom, tot says"

"In all my years of being in and following the media, that's the only time I saw a headline and story refering to dead spirits committing crimes."

COMIX SECTION. The Further Adventures of Herman "Speed" Graphic, Ace Photographer for the Chagrin Falls Commercial Scimitar, and his Faithful Companion, Typo the Wonder Pig.

PANEL ONE: Huddled in his trenchcoat, a deathbed gift from an ancient mystic wire service executive editor on a fog-shrouded eastern island, Speed grumbles, "Hmph! As polar rescues go, a C-130 idling at McMurdo has nothing on Balto the sled dog, Typo! In my rookie days we knew how to sell papers!"

Typo protests, "Never mind that, Boss! The campaign season is heating up and we have to get down to Chagrin Terminal to line up seats! You want to be a boy on the bus, don't you!?"

PANEL TWO: At the bus yard, milling correspondents jockey for best lines as Speed reviews the contents of the Deft Duo's campaign duffel, "Lemme see, Typo! Pepto and barf bags, headache powders, compass and flashlight, liniment, hip flasks, extra film and flashbulbs ... here's our Little Black Book!?"

Typo leers, "Fell to tatters years ago, Boss, but we got Features Editor Hyperba Lee's sorority alumnae association membership list! There's a girl in every port for you!"

PANEL THREE: A chubby gentleman in a French-cut three-piece suit and tassled loafers enquires, "I'm from the Washington Times! Would you gentlemen have room for my speech agent's Rolodex?" just as a willowy woman of indeterminate age requests, "I hope you mere reporters don't expect to use the bus bathroom ever! My network camera crew are converting it to a makeup studio!"

PANEL FOUR: The panel is crowded with urgent dialog bubbles surrounding our dumbfounded heroes: "Don't expect to smoke on THIS bus unless you have hallucinogenics!" ... "Pens and pencils!? What do you need pens and pencils for!?" ... "Listen, you brute! My book publisher gave me this inflatable credenza, and I'm going to use it!" ... "Who are you to call my boss an clown!? Just see if you can get a sex queen to marry YOU!" ... "Is this the vegetarian bus?" ... "Front seats for monopoly papers! All you JOA trash to the rear!" ... "Syndicate this!" ... "Bourbon! You have bourbon!? I'm turning you in to the aisle monitor!" ... "We're from the Times! Resistance is fu --oh, doughnuts!"

PANEL FIVE: Standing in the empty lot, the Deft Duo watch the last bus huff away in a cloud of smoke and Absolut fumes as Speed mourns, "Vegetarian bus!? Aisle monitor!? Typo, I think this is going to be a long, boring political campaign!"

Typo agrees, "But not near as boring as it will be for the readers, Boss!"

Hot on the trail of a good campaign coverage story, BONG Chief Copyboy Charley Stough, Dayton Daily News, 45 S. Ludlow St., Dayton, Ohio 45401 whistles up a redcap for BONG busboys worldwide. Phone (937) 225-2445 after 6 p.m. eastern. Fax 225-2489. E-mail copyboy@dma.org.