I'm imagining there were sighs of relief from deskers everywhere when Nancy Pelosi described the Republicans' spending bill as "a bowl of doggy doo."
You raise some good questions, Azrael. I certainly don't think anything needs to be "dumbed down" for smaller circulation dailies, but since the emphasis is mainly on local news, I think when you run stories about Trump or other political squabbles, they need to be worth the space. The president disparaging African countries with profanity obviously was. I think our shop's decision to leave shithole in the AP story and work around it in the headline was the right call. We've had several readers from our deeply conservative part of the country object to AP's coverage of Trump, saying it's inherently biased against him. At first I laughed it off ... but then I thought, the Associated Press — at its best — is trying to provide coverage for every news organization that subscribes. Many of those serve readers who are blindly loyal to Trump, many others serve readers who automatically despise everything he says. Is it possible to serve both of those groups with a single, impartial politics story? I'm not so sure.
If the right call was to run shithole in the headline, then how come 99 percent of newspapers didn't do it? The point is these assholes are taking this opinion because it makes Trump look bad and furthers their agenda. Truth is, it should NEVER go in the headline no matter if Trump, Obama or Honest Abe said it. It doesn't belong and that's the bottom line.