Washington Post: "Marty Schottenheimer, NFL coach whose teams wilted in the postseason, dies at 77"

Is that right? The Post sports section doesn’t handle sports obits?

 

"Chocolate magnate Charlie Bucket, accused of stealing secret beverage during Wonka tour, dies at 85"

"Dottie Henson, whose dropped throw cost Rockford a World Series title, passes at 90"

"Harry Callahan, vigilante cop never convicted despite multiple police brutality charges, dies of self-inflicted gunshot wound"

 

Lucy Van Pelt, Bitch Who Never Actually Held The Football, Dies at 110

 

Seriously, that headline on Schottenheimer was weird. You think it was one of those mistakes that wasn't supposed to make it into print? You'd either have to be quite a jokester or just a jerk to write a headline like that.

 

Someone somewhere tried kerning Schottenheimer into a 1-column hed.

Close your eyes and imagine how funny that would look.

 

I'd put that part in the body, way down near the end. It'd be classless to do otherwise.

 

There are several programs, Chartbeat among them, where you can test heds. You enter an alternate headline (or headlines) into the web portal, and different viewers will see different headlines when they go to your homepage. There are so many factors that can affect those results, I'm not sure how valid they are. It's pretty much busywork assigned to web producers when editors overseeing the producers want to feel important.

 

The headline was fucking stupid, no matter how they arrived at it.

Under no circumstances, unless maybe that person is Hitler, do you try to be snarky or bring up a person’s shortcomings when they die. Never, ever.

 

Is That How You Write It, Charlie Brown?

 

Whoever made the mistake won’t learn their lesson. You can’t say anything to snowflake millennials anymore and the Post is overrun with them

 

I'm picturing something like my Champions Tour agate when Mark Calcavecchia won a tournament in a playoff and we had an editor who liked to run the par scores.