The sub-editing geniuses at The Sydney Morning Herald have been at it again overnight, fucking up the basics when it comes to the paper’s folios (page numbering) – a flaw the washed-up hacks who compile this column thought they’d given up on.

But, fuck it! One more time, eh? Above are the fake front-page of today’s (Saturday’s) SMH, at left, and supposedly the real front-page even though it’s folioed as page 3. Stick with us here; it’ll soon be as clear as mud.

The MGH has banged on many times about how the SMH and its sister Sunday sell their souls to Harvey Norman by giving him the wraparound to the day’s book, even though they don’t make them take the whole three and a half-pages, confining poor old Peter FitzSimon’s column on the Saturday to the wastebin or to line the pet cocky’s cage. We’ve never asked him what he thinks about that; maybe we should have by now.

But having sold their souls to dear, kind, humanitarian Gerry “Let the peasants eat cake” Harvey, the geniuses that run the Heralds are left with the decision about when to start numbering the edition’s pages with what is clearly meant to be a throwaway wraparound.

Ad we’ve also banged on repeatedly, they can never seem to make up their minds about what to number the real front page (top right) – sometimes they call it page one. Today – as is often the case – it’s page three.

To repeat our oft-expressed criticism, numbering what you’re trying to put across to readers as your real front page as page three makes fuck-all sense really. Pardon the French.

When you number your book from the very front as page 1, virtually ignoring the entire concept that the wraparound is a throw-away, then that’s your front page!

Which then leads us to other hapless subs at the paper doing what we see below…

… declaring that stories that flow over to inside pages – five and six in the two cases shown above – started out on … wait for it ….THE FRONT PAGE! … even though we all know it’s really page three!

And don’t get us started – again! – on the absurdity that often happens with this crazy approach – that the splash – Panic hits Biden camp – on your fake front page that is still your page one – isn’t even strong enough to make the splash on your real front page which is, of course, page three.

As we’ve also mentioned before, if this is giving you a headache, we can pause a while for you to pop a few panadol.

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Back with us? Good. The MGH has come up with some solutions to this problem, ones we know the SMH head honchos won’t be taking up because their legs are barely visible poking out of Jerry Harvey’s arse.

But were we in charge at the Heralds, we’d like to think we’d have the guts to tell Jerry that if he wants the four-page wraparound, then make him cop a quarter-page at the most on page one – yes, the front-page – and take the other three pages as well. We think FitzSimons would like that.

With only a quarter-page ad on page one – the front page – make that your true front page with the Biden story as your well-deserved splash – and get rid of that fucking pretend front page on page 3 that the subs seem incapable of coming to grips with or numbering properly or consistently!

Well, it could be done if you had any guts at all and any faith in your product surviving putting Gerry Harvey’s nose out of joint.

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The future of the printed editions of The Sydney Morning Herald may have been obliquely referred to when its owner, Nine Entertainment Co, on Friday announced it would cut 200 roles, or about four per cent of its nearly 5000 staff, across its newspaper and broadcast divisions.

Nine chief executive Mike Sneesby told staff in a memo the media business was in a stronger position than any of its rivals but was not immune to economic headwinds impacting many companies globally.

But here might be the instructive part: “All of our business units are either completely digital or have rapidly growing digital revenues – and each one maintains a leading position in their respective markets,” he said.

If the future is digital, grab hold of your hard-copy SMH, dear BUGgers, and hug it tight if you are fond of that old-fashioned medium; the feel of newsprint and the smell of the ink and how it remains on your fingers. It may not last much longer, particularly the Monday to Friday editions.

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