The column that has fun with the smaller mistakes and missteps of Australia’s mainstream mediocre; that pays homage to those sweet little fishes that individually don’t amount to a full meal but collectively can cause a tummy upset over the overall state of the once great and noble craft of journalism in this country.

The washed up, bitter, old hacks who compile this column are in complete shock this morning, we can tell you!

And here’s why? While they were happy enough to pick up an error in today’s print edition of The Sun Herald – a mistake in a heading, mind, and they don’t get much worse than that! – they’ve then been amazed – nay, shocked! – to find the error had been promptly picked up and fixed for its online platform by Herald subs!

At top and below is the mistake in the hardcopy edition of the Herald that landed on The Bug HQ’s footpath this morning.

As you clever BUGgers out there would know, plural nouns – the Dragons’ comeback and their season – deserve – no let’s make that require, if English grammar standards are still a thing in journalism, – a plural verb. The two hyphens are irrelevant.

For example, you would never write: “My mum – and my dad – is coming to my graduation ceremony.”

But why are our compilers so shocked? Because of how the yarn then appeared on the paper’s website!

More or less fixed! And yes, the washed-up, bitter, old hacks who compile this column might still be in complete shock this morning but they are impressed!

The Bug and its media columns have always declared that the copy that lobs at our workplace is clearly an early-edition one. So mistakes are more likely, right? We often take that into account and let silly little literals pass by.

But in all the years we’ve been looking at such things, we can’t remember a time when The Sun- Herald – or its sister daily The Sydney Morning Herald for that matter – have ever bothered to fix such errors for the edition that is finally uploaded to the website, presumably at the end of each night’s production efforts. You’d want to upload the final, most corrected, edition, right?

Today’s effort in spotting and then fixing an error and presenting quality journalism on one platform at least suggests there’s maybe hope for the Heralds after all?

Want to be alerted immediately a new blog hits Australia’s longest running and most offensive satire site? Simply click on the Follow sign or the link below to be emailed new yarns the moment they are uploaded! The very second we go far too far – and trust us we will – you can then quickly unfollow via the three dots!

Follow The Bug Online on WordPress.com