Sub-editing when the clock's run out but the copy hasn't
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Read 23 hours ago and current, but nothing has been published for 3 years.
When this blog reached its five-year anniversary in 2018, I wrote a summary of the conclusions it had reached so far, and I vaguely thought at the time that, should it run for another five years, that might be a good time for a pause. Now we’ve reached that point – Ten Minutes Past Deadline […]
I regret to report that, after years with no serious incidents, someone has stumbled on to the biggest booby trap in the Tribune’s stylebook and set it off. A member of the newsdesk, having seen a piece on a Flemish master go up on the website, innocently emailed to say: “Hi, please can we commit […]
It appears even Glenda is having a bit of trouble with her subeditors this week: But it’s hard to decide which is more unlikely: that a mere member of the copy desk would criticise the work of one of Fleet Street’s brightest stars, or that a subeditor – who, as a group, shall we say, […]
Woe betide the editor who moves the crossword: this is an axiom you will hear repeated in the corridors of power at every British newspaper. Decades ago, the Tribune reprinted the entire leaked text of a speech by Khrushchev denouncing Stalinism; as well as being one of the most highbrow scoops in history, it also […]
Many years ago, I swear, Private Eye reprinted without comment a map from another publication showing the major cities of Spain in accurate relation to each other – but overlaid on an outline that was clearly the shape of France. The Tribune has had its moments with maps over the years, but I’ve never seen […]
As this blog is fond of saying, there’s nothing like page one. While breaking news went online a while ago, British newspaper front pages still retain a salience vastly in excess of their dwindling sales: nothing beats them for rhetoric, and nothing in the digital realm has been invented that has their capacity to summarise […]
We used to be disciplined about this. For headlines, the rule was three and three in mobile view – that is to say, three decks of headline and three decks of standfirst, and no more, when looking at a Tribune article on your phone. That’s pretty tight, so I used to allow myself to go […]
This blog usually has fun decoding the confusions of agenda and language that international anglophone news throws up – human “coyotes”, angry cassowaries chasing “blokes”, and so on. But this ambiguity is potentially more serious. This summer, the US launched a new suicide prevention hotline number, 988. There have recently been technical problems with it […]
Don’t you think it looks just like them? What, you don’t? In an embarrassing incident in the Tribune’s news section recently, this picture was sent through by the picture desk to illustrate a story about Monkees memorabilia, went to the sub, who didn’t notice anything wrong, then into revise for me, who didn’t notice anything […]
The Tribune has been running a headline competition in recent months, and with the self-effacing reticence that characterises our profession, I have been showing off shamelessly trying to win it. (Not entirely successfully: because you have to be nominated by your peers to get in, not all one’s efforts bear fruit. On one story about […]
