The washed-up, bitter, old hacks who compile this column could be forgiven for being very, very, hurt that mainstream mediocre organs consistently refuse to accept our criticisms and change their ways.
Okay, they’re not than precious to think that Newscorpse columnists will respond positively to their never-ending pisstakes and actually try to practice real, objective and fair journalism.
But they would like to think that the editors of The Sydney Morning Herald would have taken up our suggestions over time as to how best to folio their daily books, especially the Saturday edition.
But they were at it again yesterday, with their fake cover/front page (top, at left) – fronting the ubiquitous Hardly Normal four-page wraparound that gets thrown away with poor old Peter FitzSimons’ column – being counted as page 1, while the page on page 3 that looks like a real front page of a newspaper but isn’t, is folioed page 3.
As we’ve pointed out frequently, this bizarre situation seems to constantly confuse the paper’s sub-editor (add an ‘s’ there if there’s more than one) as to what really is the paper’s front page.
There should be no confusion, really because, like all you BUGgers out there, that page at left above is most definitetly the front page, while the one on the right is not, and not only because it’s page 3. Confused?
Please don’t be like the paper’s sub-editor (add an ‘s’ there if there’s more than one) who on Friday night had two yarns continued from Page 3 but when you went to the relevant pages – six and eight – readers were informed that the EV subsidy story was carried over from only THE FRONT PAGE, although to be fair it was carried over from THE FRONT PAGE and Page 3, while the Yes ad blitz yarn was from Page 3.
While this may seem a slight improvement from our past MGH criticisms of, in one case, two stories that only originated on page 3 being touted as being carried over From Front Page, even though they clearly weren’t.
Also recently, we had a yarn on page 1, the cover page, that the paper’s editorial committee clearly decided was the edition’s lead, which didn’t make the splash on page 3 and was only continued well into the book. Some news sense, right?
Imagine if you’ve instinctively tossed the wraparound away or lined the cocky’s cage with it, and you then get confronted by a yarn continued on Page 12 from the front cover you’ve discarded!
We’ll pause for a moment if anyone out there wants to go pop a panadol or two.
We at the MGH openly admit we don’t have a solid, foolproof, solution that the geniuses at the Herald might adopt but are pretty confident they wouldn’t anyway.
The basic problem is that the page (at left above), will always be the front page no matter how shitty a front page it looks and is, and the paper’s sub (add an ‘s’ there if there’s more than one) should never link yarns carried over inside the book as being from the cover or page 1 when they are not.
A least-worse solution might be to just always start the folios from the page 3 that looks like a real cover (and that’s what the Sun-Herald generally does) and don’t number the wraparound that gets tossed aside with Fitz’s column.
Our MGH’s preference? Number the fucking thing from the front, make the most of a real front cover out of the half-page Gerry Harvey has generously left you, and scrap this absurd attempt to make page 3 look like the real cover of a real, serious, professional newspaper even though it clearly isn’t.
Bugger, we’ve got a headache now and we’ve gotta go.
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