Probably not!

The big question on our chapped lips today – everyone’s chapped lips – for this edition of Media Glass House is this: is there just the one sub-editor at The Sydney Morning Herald who’s fucking hopeless at their job or are there at least two?

The reason for the question: there’s either one or two subs at the SMH who still think that page 3 of the edition they are working on is in fact the cover page. Yes, we’re on our old – make that ancient – hobby-horse of how those at the Herald fuck up the folios of any edition that has a so-called wraparound.

It’s when stories that begin on any edition’s page 3 – the one that looks more like a cover page than the real one on page one – are continued inside the book. At top is PAGE 3 of Thursday’s SMH. Once again, PAGE 3, you numbskull subs!

The edition’s front page – hint, subs, the one at the front with more information around the masthead – was numbered as page 1. Pretty sensible when you think about it.

So let’s now look at how our fuckwit subs the other night handled two stories that were carried over from that PAGE THREE.

Yes, one or perhaps two subs at the paper think page 3 of any hardcopy newspaper is the FRONT PAGE.

Will we ever get sick of pleading with subs that when they plop their lazy, unprofessional arses down for a night shift, please … PUHLEEESE! – just check how the next morning’s edition is numbered? Sick? The truth being that we already are. But we’re not going to stop until someone with some logic and commonsense at the SMH fixes this once and for all.

STOP PRESS! Can you BUGgers out there guess what a sub at the SMH did last night (Friday) when working – we use that word loosely – on today’s Saturday edition – namely the hardcopy that lobbed on one of our compilers’ footpath this morning. Read it and weep.

These SMH subs simply can’t help themselves. They just love calling PAGE 3 (that’s it below) as PAGE 1 or the FRONT PAGE! If they consistently get such a basic fact wrong, are we not entitled to question their general subbing skills?

Memo SMH subs once more: See the masthead above. It’s missing shit that’s included on the real front page, you know, the one they call page 1. Also known as the front page! Because that’s where it is!

By the way, the paper’s online edition corrected the sub’s error, rightly saying that the taxi yarn had come from page 3. Credit where credit’s due, we suppose. Was it corrected in later hardcopy city editions? Probably not. But at the very least, there’s someone at the Herald who can count. Sometimes.

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