…. but we just can’t help ourselves!

Before this column takes the mickey out of the sub-editors at the Herald mastheads for the umpteenth time, a mea culpa on the part of the washed-up, bitter, old hacks who write this stuff.

Yes, it’s hard to believe but we’ve made a mistake. We might have done so once before, too, a long time ago, although we’re not sure about that.

Here’s what we’ve done. In endless criticisms of those Herald mastheads over the disasters they cause for themselves by never, ever, settling on a single plan of attack when folioing (page-numbering) editions that involve a wraparound, we’ve called page 1 the fake front page and page 3 the real front page. We repeat: we were wrong much as it pains us to say that.

Take today’s SMH. Below are page 1 on the left and page 3 on the right.

That’s how they numbered today’s paper with its very-frequent Hardly-Norman wraparound from that humanitarian and all-round good guy, Harvey.

From now on, we’re going to call the image on the left – page 1 – the paper’s real front page because that’s very much what it is even though it looks a bit shitty. It has more information in its masthead than the image on the right, even though it’s page 3 and might look more like a real front page that’s not sucking up to Hardly-Normal as the paper’s owners strive to survive.

Yes, our thinking up to now has been a little muddled but nowhere near as muddled as that of the sub-editors (we’re assuming they’ve got more than one) at the SMH and The Sun-Herald. No-one could be that confused. It’s happening a bit less of late but the mastheads have sometimes folioed the inside pretend cover as page 1 and that has also caused its fair share of subediting fuckups.

What we will stick with rigidly is our view that you can’t call your paper’s page 3 (the one on the right, above) your cover page! It’s a nonsense that offends basic logic, if nothing else. Ditto, really, if you call page three page one! Still not really the cover page is it, unless every buyer instinctively throws away the wraparound?

So what did our bright-eyed down-table sub do last night when processing the PM sinks Plebersek story that flowed over to page 6 from that page 3?

Yep. As you can see above, it flowed over From Front Page. Which is simply wrong, wrong, wrong!

In Tuesday’s edition, two stories flowed over from page 3 and they were both “From front page”. Wrong, wrong, wrong.

Late last week, two stories that flowed over from page 3 were treated differently. One sub had it flowing from the front page; the other sub used the correct “From page 3”. Well, at least we’re assuming it was two different subs. Rather sad if it was the same sub both times, right? Mega muddled!

So a summary then. The MGH keeps promising to give up on this little campaign of ours but we sadly can’t let it go. But from now on, there will be no calling the real cover page – the one folioed as page 1 more often than not – as a fake front page and page 3 as the real front page because it clearly, logically, isn’t!

Do you think this new approach will one day force these mastheads to get their stories straight? That those poor subs will eventually get it right and call page 3 for what it is? Of course not!

We’ll also stick with our oft-stated view that the simplest solution to this mess is that the Heralds drop this nonsense of a repeat of its cover on page 3 (that as mentioned earlier is sometimes page one). Wouldn’t that great humanitarian Gerry Harvey much prefer that his expensive wraparound isn’t thrown into the rubbish bin or used to line the pet cockie’s cage? As also often stated, we think columnist Peter FitzSimons would appreciate the change too.

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