Asbury Park Press caption imbroglio

I thought maybe they were deliberately obscuring it once they realized the rogue cut line was out there.

 

Apparently, until yesterday, Asbury Park Press writers could self-publish.

Asbury Park Press makes changes amid caption mess

 

Geez, when my newspaper did something similar back in the day, we made Jay Leno’s “Headlines.”

Photog out in the caption for a local golf tournament that a car dealer was giving away a Cheapass Dodge Neon. Copy editor thought that was the actual name of the car and let it ride. Photog fired, copy editor suspended for a week.

 

Recalling the Neon, I can't say the photographer's caption was inaccurate.

Still, if there are two things I've learned over the years, one is "Get it right the first time" and the other is "Don't piss off the automotive advertisers."

 

Any suit who has allowed the reporters and photographers to post stories and photos without an editor looking at them first deserves to lose his/her vacation home and multi million dollar salary. Let's put it this way: In this day and age if you were the CEO of a newspaper, could you go to bed confident some joker or disgrunted employee did not sabotage the website or the fishwrap? All copy has to be reviewed. If you can't afford an editor or two, just fold the newspaper.
Also ... newspapers should take more seriously the "joke" headlines that get erased at the last minute. A person should be fired immediately if such a joke headline is discovered. Why? Because this will happen someday when you least expect it. The joke headline will get published.

 

I'm not Jewish so my experience here may not mean much.... but it seems to me the "JAP" slur occupies kind of an awkward space in that every single person I've ever heard use "JAP" was Jewish, and generally it was as sort of a term of endearment. (Certainly doesn't make it OK to use, and it means something different when coming from outside the group, but it makes it tricky for me to gauge the offensiveness.)

I worked with a sports guy who once joked on air "all car dealers are sleazy."

The GM made him sit down and write a personal letter of apology to every single car dealer who had advertised with our station. When the last letter went out in the mail, he fired him.

 

You've been here long enough to know she's a 6.

 

Um, this edict might last two weeks ... unless Gannett gets another round of cuts in sooner.

 

Every one of them will claim they cannot afford to hire more editors. And not one of them will be embarrassed or shamed into doing such.

Gannett will not hire anyone at Asbury Park to ensure that cutline mistakes like that are not duplicated. They'll simply ask the already overworked staff to do more. With less (time).