6/5/92
(JP Anniversary Supplement)
Jocularities
of Journalism
We
really do try to be perfect here at the Post, but sometimes our slip
shows, as these gems of funnies, foibles and follies illustrate.
By:
Sam Orbaum
STOCKS
SINK. That was a headline in The Jerusalem Post some years ago, and
if you don't find that funny, you should probably be reading the Publisher's
Message instead of this.
The instant I saw those words, it hit me like a bun
of tricks - I mean, a ton of bricks: the perfect spoonerism in 36-point
type. I clipped it, because I couldn't bear the thought of tossing it
back into the sea of words that is the newspaper morgue.
These jocularities of journalism abound, even in
a newspaper as straight-laced as the Post. Sometimes we didn't mean
to be funny, but the true human spirit came through. Such as the misspelled
weather report of some years ago, "Unreasonably warm." Reason
to be jolly, indeed.
When our editorial department became fully computerized
in 1987, we thought we'd cover our derrieres by publishing a chummy
warning to our readers. Please bear with us any errors while we adjust
to the new word-processing system, said the notice. It gave no indication
of the terror we all felt at the potential for monumental muck-ups.
The system we use, Atex, allows us to insert notes
on the screen that won't end up in the newspaper. "Notes mode,"
we call it: a very helpful feature, but it provided (and still does)
the greatest potential for very embarrassing mistakes. The catch is
that a passage may look like notes mode on our screen, but, when
tens of thousands of people read it in the paper the next day, you know
it wasn't.
One writer, whose various aliases I'd better not
mention, filed a story on a fellow named Yizhak. Now, we have our own
way of spelling that and many other common Israeli names, but our style
may be superseded on request. "That's how this guy spells his name,"
the writer jotted in notes mode, "but the silly shmuck doesn't
read the paper so spell it any way you want." Well, he thought
it was in notes mode. Fortunately, the writer himself happened to catch
it just as the page was going to camera.
More than once a notes-mode passage has appeared
in print. A former editor-in-chief committed a doozy in a Social and
Personal item, when he inserted a personal comment about a new South
American ambassador: "This fellow's Jewish." Now the whole
country knows.
This same editor, who would request anonymity if
asked, was known to be punctiliously conservative. He was also known
as a leftist with no ideological sympathies for the Likud. So when he
wrote an uncharacteristically ironic editorial "praising"
Shamir and the Likud and "damning" Peres and Labor, utter
confusion followed. No one saw the irony. Editorial staffers looked
at each other in amazement; readers called to express their surprise;
Peres's office called to express his dismay. The next day's paper carried
an unprecedented clarification.
When we goof, everyone knows. It's hard to deny something
like this 1958 four-column front-page banner headline:
Nation
Makes Ready for Tenth
Tenth Independence Day Fete
A layout man will look at that, shrug his shoulders and say,
"It fit."
Headline gaffes are the most spectacular, of course.
In a truth-or-consequences story about Shimon Peres, the head read:
"Did Peres die?". (No, but did he lie?) We had this double
whammy in the mid-1970s: "Vitcong attak in suburban Saigon."
More recently: "New unclear reactor operational in India."
The headline that included the name "Willie Mandela" looked
right, and got through. So did the Page 1 overline "Tit-for-tit
conflict."
"Peres: One of the great Jewish women of history."
This was unfortunate wording, but technically not a mistake: Peres was
not the subject of the headline, but its speaker - he was referring
to Golda Meir. In the "two-headed monster" headline department,
here's a couple from our sports pages: "All Blacks control wind
and tame Lions"; and "Referee suspended over urine sample."
In the mid-1980s, we had a story about "A scheme
for a gas pipeline between Alexandria and Ashkelon." The headline
writer must have been seriously dyslexic to come up with "Alex-Ashdod
oil pipeline may be discussed." (Perhaps it was the same fellow
with the same illness who wrote about a man named Gabbai, and then two
paragraphs later called him Baggai.)
Before you begin to wonder what nerds we hire to
write headlines, let's take a look at some good ones: "De Gaulle
opens 'frank' talks in the Kremlin"; "Land of milk only"
(there was a honey shortage); "Oy vey, Izmir" (a Turkish town
fallen on hard times); "Did you wait for a bus today?" (story
of a soccer game in 1959 between Egged and Dan bus cooperative employees);
"Consumed by jealousy" (New Guinea man who was killed and
eaten by his girlfriend's husband); "Jerusalem rates won't rise,
but you'll have to pay them" (1957); "Can't pay because he's
in jail because he can't pay."
Nice, all of them. But our very, very, absolutely
most wonderful headline: from 1949, a daringly barbed but thoroughly
legitimate Page 1 gem that managed to express the writer's anger at
continuing terrorism forays from a certain village: "Wadi Fukin
Arabs Quit Village Again" (curiously, the story beneath that one
was headlined "Clapp and Aides in Lausanne"); and from 1975,
an exquisite pun over a minor item announcing that a brand of tea would
no longer be sold here: "Tetley Tea leaves."
Our mistakes don't seriously harm anyone, even when
we occasionally kill a perfectly alive person. The head "Did Peres
die?" is more suspicion than suspect. But another blooper was decidedly
cold-blooded: " ... the late Professor Lewis's influence has been
on the wane." That should have read "of late ..."
Then there was the cataclysmic error about a retired
Latin American diplomat. We said that he had died when he didn't. Naturally,
he was furious. Naturally, we ran an apology the next day, saying we
wished him a long life. Naturally, our apology ran the same day he really
did die.
The Atex gremlin and the Angel of Death collude at
times. The gruesome twosome teamed up in this unlikely report: "The
victims were beheaded, hacked, stabbed, shot and burned alive ..."
We not only kill, we convert. A prominent American
Jewish leader died recently. We wrote: "Grief-stricken colleagues
said Comay was known for his intense concern and sincere commitment,
combined with a gentile reconciling presence." If you don't believe
it, I have proof.
But things even out. Baseball fans had no problem
identifying the picture of Philadelphia superstar Mike Schmidt, but
it was news to all of us that he was now, suddenly, Jewish. The caption
read: "Homer hitter - Mike Schwartz."
Yosef Burg once converted, but we were scooped on
the news by a foreign paper. Burg, the former Knesset stalwart, had
been the subject of a story that ran in our paper's New York Times Weekly
Review. The following week, they ran this correction: "Because
of a transcription error, a dispatch from Tel Aviv on negotiations for
a new Israeli government referred incorrectly to Yosef Burg, leader
of the National Religious Party. It should have described him as a veteran
(not Beduin) in Israeli politics."
Our confusing politics were also evident in an editorial
last year in the International Herald Tribune: "Even the conservative
police minister, Galei Zahal, sees the verge of a dramatic breakthrough
..."
Back to our own dirty laundry.
Oopses can infiltrate any part of the paper. Even
the paper's nameplate once nearly fell victim. It happened some years
ago, the day after we ran our annual Purim page, in which the nameplate
is doctored to something like The Juicy Lemon Post or The Jerusalem
Imposter. Well, wouldn't you know, the next day someone absentmindedly
pasted up the Purim nameplate on the real front page. An editor noticed
the gaffe at the last second, as it was rolling off the press.
There are typos and there are typos. From time to
time we mispell - ha! You thought you caught me! - misspell a word,
and it is a forgivable and forgettable error. The ones we savor have
a special quality and deserve to be framed and nailed to a wall:
"Brad
Gilbert withdrew because of an inquiry to his big toe."
"UCONN
star Nadav Henefeld accumulates far too many fouls, understandable for
anybody trained on the aggressive NAACP courts."
"David Lewis, British hotelier and president of Israel ..."
(actually, he's president of Isrotel)
"The
Texas Rangers crushed the Minnesota Twins 1-1."
" ... to the 11 Shin Bet men who have received presidential persons
..."
In
a letter to the editor during the Scud war: "If Shabbat radio is
now necessary, why not fill it with inspiring Shababt messages and music?"
The Shabab, or Palestinian youth gangs, would have only been too happy.
"Derbyshire
won by three wickets with semen balls to spare ..."
In Haifa in 1974, a woman was arrested for excessive laughter
and shouting on a bus. The judge threw out the case, saying "They
have exaggerated in seeking to have an act of wild laughter viewed as
a matter for legal action." The prosecutor's office appealed. Our
story went on to say that " ... the judge erred in concentrating
only on the accused's unrestrained laughter. He had ignored the part
of the charge sheet dealing with her unrestrained shooting."
Sometimes we have a problem mixing up letters and
numbers. "The proposal was submitted to the ICAO in advance of
a conference of ISS member nations ..." This looks fine, unless
you look for the first reference to ISS. There is none. Only because
I happen to know that ICAO has 155 member nations did I realize a desk
editor must have misread the reporter's handwriting.
This writer was either innumerate or he has an alarming
number of fingers: "A half-dozen of the handful of black marketeers
..."
This misassembled phrase produced a wonderful faux
pas: "A group calling itself Islamic Jihad for the Liberation of
Palestine on Monday night said ..."
An ad for Mazola corn oil said it was perfect "for
frying salads & baking." The advertiser should be more concerned
with his address than a missing comma: the ad goes on to state: "Imported
by Reten, 13 Totseret Ha'aretz Street." If your Hebrew is wanting,
that means "Product of Israel St."
A picture is worth a thousand typos. A display of
a renowned photographer's works in our former Contact magazine suffered
the indignity of switched captions. This can happen - but seldom with
such sensational transmogrification. In the first photo, proud new immigrants
- father and son - hold an Israeli flag moments after their arrival
from the Soviet Union. This is captioned "Prisoners of War, Golan
Heights, 1970." Turn the page, and you see a grim picture of wretched,
bound Syrian soldiers writhing on a dusty field. This one is captioned:
"New immigrants from the Soviet Union at Ben-Gurion Airport, 1990."
Ooooooops!
An example of display on words (pardon dis play on
words) looked suspiciously like the layout editor knowingly created
a subliminal seduction. Yitzhak Shamir was shown taking careful aim
with an Uzi during a visit to a firing range. His facial expression
was rather antipathetic. Directly below his trigger finger was a completely
unrelated story about the effects of the new budget, with the headline
"The weak won't be harmed, Shamir says."
The lead - a story's opening paragraph - should give
an idea of what the story is about and/or lure the reader to read on.
A good lead for a feature story should be short and zippy, with a minimum
of extraneous or pedestrian information. Hereunder, some of the worst,
and one of the best.
"Imagine setting out on a six-week junket abroad
with 16 items of luggage that contain canned meat loaf, dried fruit,
tuna, humous, halva, tomato puree, corn, olives, coffee, tea, soft-drink
mixes, mustard, soup almonds, assorted snack packs and sweets, crackers
and biscuits, gefilte fish in jars, wine, candles, plastic cutlery and
dishes, daily menu suggestions, detergents, scouring pads, toilet paper,
personal hygiene products, cosmetics, medicine ... and that doesn't
even begin to cover it all!"
Neither does that paragraph cover it all: that was
not only the lead, it was the lead sentence! The second paragraph continued
with the list. One big swath of blue ink ensured that this blather died
at the newsdesk.
Another clunker that was thankfully edited out by
the desk was a lead to a film review. In its original form it linked
five consecutive cliches: "For those who haven't yet heard, still
unaffected by word of mouth, it might be worth mentioning that, whether
or not you can fathom it, the odds are against a better film than Barton
Fink hitting our screens this year."
Leading a story on tourism to Jerusalem: "All
roads lead to Spain ..."
Possibly our best-ever lead was this beaut by Judy
Siegel in a 1983 article, describing a conference of "yekkes":
"They all arrived several minutes early, with each man wearing
a jacket and tie, and they listened to a piece by Beethoven, three poems
and four speeches with nary a whisper." With a lead like that,
the rest of the story is hardly necessary.
Deadline approaches, and the end of this page is
near: good time to chuck in a few good leftovers, jot a "30"
to signify the end (no one knows why we do that, but anyway, it's always
edited out), and hurry this thing over to the impatient editor before
she gives the space over to someone else.
Perhaps the funniest byline we've had accompanied
a story by Calev Ben-David about the coming of the Batman craze. The
story was full of Bat-references: Bat-hype and Bat-plot and Bat-tickets.
The mischievous byline read: Calev Bat-David.
The best wisecrack regarding a serious byline concerned
a joint story by our various European correspondents: "By Yossi
Lempkowicz, David Horowitz, Michel Zlotowski and Wladimir Struminski."
An editor looked at that and screeched: "Jeezus, it looks like
this thing was written by a Polish law firm!"
30
