The Daily Herald of Arlington Heights, Ill., in the suburbs of Chicago, needs a copy editor to check the headlines that flow onto their web pages.
A blog reader sent me this amusing screencap yesterday.
I think they meant brain tumor.
Moments after I received the tip, I visited the site myself to see if the error was still there. No; thankfully, the Daily Herald folks had spotted it and fixed it themselves.
As I let the breaking news slideshow play on, however, I found the same problem, but on a different story.
I’m guessing the headlines flow in from whatever front-end system is used in Arlington Heights. And I’m guessing that if the headline doesn’t fit, the system just bites off the end of the headline.
Full disclosure: The assistant managing editor for content systems at that paper is also the president of the American Copy Editors Society. And that fine organization, obviously, is the gracious host of this very blog.
The glitches are pretty funny, though. And I’d be remiss in my duties to give the Daily Herald a pass. Especially since a blog reader went to all the trouble of sending me a screen cap.
The lesson here is to keep an eye on those web headlines. Even if you fix them as quickly as you can, you never know how many readers might see them first.
Average daily circulation of the Daily Herald is 104,053.
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You know who else needs a copy editor?
Local TV news operations. Chicago’s WMAQ-TV in particular. And Harrisburg’s Fox43 TV news. And Local 15 News in Mobile, Ala. And other local TV news operations. And CBS local media. And the web operation for DC101 radio. And CNN and CNN Money and Fox News (and Fox News again) and the BBC and German news channel N24. And Martha Stewart’s TV operation. And the Disney Channel. And creators of mobile apps. And Google News’ ‘bots. And Baseball jersey manufacturers. And Georgetown University. And Kansas State University. And the New York Jets, the Minnesota Vikings, the St. Louis Cardinals and the Washington Nationals (boy, do they need a copy editor). And the National Hockey League. And Fox Sports. And college athletic department ticket offices. And the Virginia general assembly. And college alumni magazines. And pharmacies. And the makers of Sudafed. And Borders bookstore. And the U.S. Postal Service. And government agencies and political candidates. And Tea Party candidates. And the White House. And city and county Boards of Elections. Both the state of Pennsylvania and its department of transportation. And road paving contractors. And the city of Norfolk, Va. And the Ohio Dept. of Transportation. And South African traffic cops. And gas stations. And billboard companies. And sign painters. And Home Depot and manufacturers of “hoodies.†And T-shirt designers. And more T-shirt designers. And Old Navy. And rubber stamp designers. And glass etchers. And Starbucks. And restaurants, breakfast joints, Chinese restaurants and cake decorators. And more cake decorators. And drive-in movie theater managers. And romance novelists. And South Africa’s New Age and Sunday Independent newspapers. And Dublin’s Sunday Business Post. And newspapers in the U.K. And the Washington Post (Hey! A repeat offender!), the Post‘s Express tab, the New York Times (Hey! Another repeat offender!), the New York Post, Wall Street Journal Europe, Newsday, USA Today, the Chicago Sun-Times (Yet another repeat offender!), the Rochester, N.Y., Democrat & Chronicle, the Seattle Times, the Salt Lake Tribune, the Portland Oregonian, the Durham, N.C., Herald-Sun, the Missoula, Mont., Missoulian, the Times-Record of Denton, Md., the Amarillo (Texas) Globe News, the Cincinnati Enquirer, the Waynesboro News Virginian, the Virginian-Pilot, the Green Bay Press-Gazette, Gannett’s N.Y. Central Media hub, the Carbondale, Ill., Southern Illinoisian and the Canarsie Courier of New York City. And the Associated Press. And Mann’s Jeweler’s Accent magazine. And Investment News magazine. And Time magazine.
