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.

Quite out of character and contrary to our general disposition, this column would like to throw a little bouquet the way of today’s edition of The Sun-Herald out of Sydeney.

First, an explanation. The Bug each Sunday gets lobbed onto the Brisbane suburban footpath of one of its washed-up, bitter, hack compilers of this column a print edition copy of said Sun-Herald. Now this is obviously a first/country edition but nevertheless he/she/they like to spot sub-editing errors – small and not so small – and see if they’ve been picked up later in the production cycle before the final edition is uploaded to the paper’s website and the paper’s subs head off to a late-opener for a well-earned drink or 12.

And, crikey! You could have knocked him/her/them/it over with a feather this morning because the mistakes they spotted were fixed for online viewing. Well, two out of three, that is, which isn’t too bad really, all things considered.

The worse error in the first/country edition was the heading shown (at top and below).

It’s an absolute nonsense of course, penned by someone who’s either not a very good sub or has just had a shocker. The Lions did not make a meal of defeating the Swans.

The heading was greatly improved upon for the online site (below).

The other two hard-copy mistakes our column compiler found were a missing word, unfortunately on a front-page story ….

… and one “as” too many in a tribute to the late, great Maggie Smith. As as you were!

There was possibly a separate hiccup on the captioning of those photos of the great dame’s career but that’s not important right now.

The bottom line is that at least one of these subediting errors – the missing “at” – was corrected for late online reading pleasure. Which we guess isn’t bad.

But while the bouquet has been offered at the top of this post, perhaps we can extend just a little brickbat for those fairly basic errors that have been made early in the production cycle. What? Early or country editions don’t deserve the very best service from those who ply the once wonderful craft of sub-editing? Or the better-trained subs come on later?

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