This column keeps promising to give up on trying to make the Nine Entertainment Co. papers – The Sydney Morning Herald and The Sun-Herald – show some consistency and logic in how they folio – page number – their editions.

And we keep breaking that promise.

We’ve taken the mickey out of both mastheads now for a very long time over their total commitment to absurd inconsistency as to what to call the real front page inside the fake front page whenever there’s an advertising wraparound. Like a mad woman’s breakfast (can we still say that in the 21stC, me-too age?) the powers-that-be at these papers are all over the place, seemingly alternating between numbering that real front page as page one or page three.

We’ve got no idea why they do that but our beef has always been with the down-table subs who sit their incompetent or lazy arses down at the start of their shift and forget – or refuse – to answer a very basic question: “Tonight, is it page one or page three?”

Because they don’t ask that question, stories that are continued inside the book are often declared incorrectly as being from page one. Which gives the bitter, washed-up hacks who compile this column the absolute shits.

If the subs are not fucking up what to number the real front page, they often declare that spilled stories are From front page. And that gives the MGH the squirts too.

For the latest example of this, we turn to Thursday’s edition of the SMH (below) where they decided to number the real front page as page 3.

And as you can see (from at top and below) the subs fucked up yet again.

We repeat our regular refrain: you can’t fucking well call the page 3 of any newspaper the front page. It’s stupidly unprofessional. And their shrinking readerships deserve better.

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