Why a Good Editor Should Have a Dirty Mind

This is going back a ways but Mickey Herskowitz used to tell a story about a typo that wound up in print in either the Houston Chronicle or Houston Post sports section, don't remember which.

The story in question was about some changes Darrell Royal made to the Texas starting line-up. Headline is supposed to read "Texas Shifts Improve Longhorns". Well, it printed, shipped and hit the newsstands with the "f" missing in Shifts.

Supposedly Mickey discovered it when he got home from the office and looked at his copy of the paper. He immediately calls the editor and tells him to grab a copy of the sport section. Editor does and after a sigh and a long pause his response was:

"Well Mickey, don't you think they know what we meant?"

 

Yeah Cool Stuff, very funny. But I think that without a dirty mind you can't become an editor can you? I mean to run the paper you have to look after many things of all sorts and with a clean mind it won't be possible to handle all this.

 

Lighten up Francis (or Frances)

 

So, what consequences do you suppose there were at USA Today for the original graphic? Do you think people got fired? Suspended? Just a big laugh around the office?

What would happen if that got in your paper?

 

I remember being a teenager watching Jay Leno's Headlines and thinking how stupid newpapers were for letting these "mistakes" get through.

When I got in the business it didn't take me long to realize it was just someone trying to be cute and it didn't get caught. Or it got a pass.

Still makes me laugh my ass off when I see stuff like this.

 

An email with that USA Today graphic made the rounds in my shop, and our consensus was the guy wanted to go out in a blaze of glory.

HAD to be intentional. And damn funny, too.