The Media Glass House wouldn’t mind a dollar for every time it’s taken the piss out of the hardcopy Heralds for their many fuckups trying to folio their print editions to cope with (mainly) Hardly Normal wraparounds.

Today’s Saturday SMH is another classic example, where the poor subeditors (we’re foolishly hoping they’ve still got more than one!) have no fucking idea what the page inside these endless wraparounds – yep, the one that looks like a real front page even though it isn’t – has been numbered by the layout powers-that-be.

Those poor subs might stand a chance if there was ever any consistency to the application of folios at the SMH and its sister Sunday, The Sun-Herald but there never is. It’s often a mishmash which means their subs get a tad confused.

For example, the 24 August Saturday edition had a Gauguin wraparound but when we finally got to the page inside that looked like a real front page, they numbered it page 1. Sadly, as today shows, it’s not always the case.

Last Sunday’s The Sun-Herald also had a wraparound and the layout powers-that-be then also decided to number the real-looking front page inside as Page 1. Oh, if such consistency could be maintained from week to week!

But it never is so can you understand why our poor darling down-table sub(s) at both titles get so confused.

At top, left, is the inside but real-looking front page that, for today at least, has been folioed page 3. That’s not always the case.

So how did those poor subs handle stories that carried over from that page 3 – to pages 4 and 6?

Yep! From page 1. And From Page 3.

If it’s not that fuck-up, it’s the use of “From the front page” which is terribly misleading for the poor reader in these throwaway, wrap-around times, with two possible front pages to choose from, provided one hasn’t been discarded.

This column, now many times over, has offered fairly simple solutions to this ongoing fuckup that happens as the Heralds continue to take it up the arse from Hardly Normal and others.

We not going to rerun them because the Heralds seem totally incapable of putting things right. And our sub(s) at the start of a shift don’t seem to care one iota how that night’s edition is being numbered. Why would you bother with something as basic to your skillset as that?

PS: And for the umpteenth time, we feel sorry for Peter FitzSimons, whose column has been tossed in the kitchen tidy or used to line the cockey’s cage.

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