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.

Our Mediocre Bytes compilers had to run the 9now tape a few times to make sure we heard right but Nine News Queensland presenter Melissa Downes in last night’s 6pm bulletin definitely said a youth had crashed a car in Hamilton on Kingston Smith Drive.

Maybe she was just horse-ing around? A simple slip of the tongue maybe, or as our image (at top and below) suggests, Melissa’s reading skills were of their usual excellent standard and some cretin up at the Nine newsroom does not know the thoroughfare in question – one of Brisbane’s best known – is Kingsford Smith Drive.

Charles Edward Kingsford Smith was an Australian aviation pioneer who piloted the first transpacific flight along with another pilot Charles Olm (no relation) and the first flight between Australia and New Zealand.

He died when his Lady Southern Cross crashed into the ocean between India and Singapore as he and a pilot were striving to be the fastest humans ever to leave England and reach Down Under.

Just near the international air terminal in Brisbane is the Charles Kingswood Memorial where you can walk around his more famous plane, the Southern Croissant. Right, Melissa? Or should the cretin who writes the shit she sometimes has to read out get the credit?

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Here’s one we normally run in this column’s more serious sibling, Media Glass House, but have the SMH subs on a Sunday night worked out a way to stop fucking up stories that spill from page 3.

Like subs on Wednesday and Friday nights who have regularly called page 3 as the cover page, the front page – and worst of all – page one.

Here’s what a clever sub did down in Sydeney on Sunday night…

Pretty smart, right? They sent the spill to page 4, and so could use Continued next page and From previous page with impunity. Can’t fuck that up!

But what’s going to happen if three yarns from page 3 spill? Shirley, there won’t be room on page four for all of them to be treated so safely?

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