… and one very unlikely to ever be beaten!

What is it they say? Pride comes before a fall?

From time to time, we have rather foolishly decided that the sub-editors at The Sydney Morning Herald and The Sun-Herald had finally – after a MGH campaign that lasted for some years – listened to us and applied some old fashioned journo logic and commonsense to how they folio (number) any edition’s pages.

That those subs finally had gotten the page numbers right and stories that were carried over from any edition’s page 3 were said to have come from ….page 3! Not from the front page or page 1! From page 3!!! What a breakthrough for accuracy in our once-wonderful craft!

But then along came the SMH issue of Thursday April 24, 2025.

Before we expose their subbing stupidity, a quick refresh.

The SMH especially often has an advertising wraparound, and when this happens, the real front page – the one with the half-page ad at the bottom – is often, but not always, folioed as page 1. The inside fake front page, even though it looks more like a real front page than the one on page 1, is called page 3!

Now, back to that edition of Thursday, 24 April. Here’s the COVER PAGE! PAGE ONE!

Here’s the fake front page. PAGE THREE!

Now, see the three stories above that are continued inside the book? And below is where our slack-arsed SMH subs reckoned they came from.

From Front PAGE! No printed newspaper in history – well, except for the Heralds of recent years – has called its PAGE 3 its FRONT PAGE!

From Page 1! No printed newspaper in history – well, except for the Heralds of recent years – has called its PAGE 3 its PAGE 1!

From Front PAGE! Once again, no printed newspaper in history – well, except for the Heralds of recent years – has called its PAGE 3 its FRONT PAGE!

And why have we decided these sub-editing fuckups from 24 April will never be surpassed? We’ve never seen three yarns continued from page 3 before and have their origins fucked up like that. The chances of four? Very unlikely. But then again, with the Heralds you never know.

UPDATE: Last Thursday week, May 8, both stories from page 3 were fucked up. One From Page 1; the other From Front Page. Wrong and wrong! Yesterday’s edition (May 15) only had one story continued from page 3, and that was fucked up too with From Front Page. Wrong! We could be charitable and hope that three fuckups coming down to two fuckups and then just the one fuckup shows a welcome downward trend to no fuck ups at all but it was still a total fuckup on each of those three Wednesday night subbing shifts. As our feature image at top explains, is there any sub at the SMH who, having plopped their lard-arse down at the subs’ table, asks as a priority how the next morning’s issue is going to be folioed? You know, like, show some professionalism?

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