When I was in college, the internet was a relatively new thing and we didn't use it for a great deal of things other than to find pictures of naked ladies. Some might argue that this is what most of the internet is used for today as well but back in the early 90's when I was in college, there really wasn't much information to be found there yet. Most of what we access online today has to be put there by someone and at that point in time, not many people had bothered to put anything there.
It's hard to imagine but there were a lot of us that viewed it as a niche product that not many people would be able to use. While most of us realized that it was definitely going to be used more, we couldn't dream that it would become all encompassing the way that it is today.
I was studying journalism in my studies and I was enthusiastic about the subject matter. I was particularly interested in print journalism in either newspapers or magazines. By the time I graduated both of these formats were still alive and well but little did I know that by the time the next decade started, almost all of them would be either dead or dying a quick death and today, there is very little print media remaining at all.
During my time in those studies though, I was relatively passionate about it and one of the jobs that I ended up with was the head editor of the school newspaper. This was a big job with a heavy focus on precision. We has spell-checkers back then, but they weren't as good at they are today (I would argue the ones today aren't very good) so it was very necessary for the editing team to be capable of seeing every little mistake big or small.
While this is a funny headline from the Baltimore Sun, it's something that would have gotten us in trouble. Back then, aside from the comics pages, subtle attempts and humor was not something we were supposed to do. This was obviously done intentionally and The Balitmore Sun was actually at one point a well-respected newspaper, so they did this on purpose. I would have gotten in a lot of trouble by the professor that was charged with overseeing us, although most weeks we could publish whatever we wanted. Our advising professors were very seriously people though without a lick of humor in them. We would have been dismissed for allowing something like this through.
Editing isn't just about being a living spelling and grammar checker though, it is also about layout and design. We had a team of writers and most of them would be vying for front page slots, which is the best thing that can happen for an author. One of the main jobs of the editing team is to ensure that the layout looks good, is easy to peruse, and makes sense. In those days we were mostly doing them with physical mockups of the paper rather than some sort of software because that is just the way it was, it would be completely digital by the time I graduated.
Making a contextual mistake like this one, indicating that the man on the right is cooking the dead cats in the story to the left, are not related stories at all. While once again this can be viewed as humorous, some people might not think so and old grandmas in particular, would probably write in to express their horror of us having done this to her. This was the early days of the emergence of the "Karen" after all.
here's an example of the same thing but in a different type of offensive way. All I can think is that the editors for this paper really didn't do their jobs very well or were pranksters. I do not know the Albert Lea area, but since none of us had ever heard of this paper, it was probably some extremely minor local paper and was likely very understaffed which was often the case towards the end of the 90's.
This one boggles the mind because postoned is not a word in English, or any other language that I can surmise. This would have certainly been underlines but the only thing I can come up with is that since this was probably buried well in the back of a local section of a regional newspaper, that they didn't give a damn. Us student workers, who were not being paid to work there anyway, would have been severely reprimanded for a mistake like this and if it happened a number of times, we would have been demoted or outright fired. Since competition was stiff at the time for the position and especially for the one that I had obtained, we didn't want to lose those jobs.
I'm happy to say that during my tenure at "the top" which was only half of a semester, I never made any mistakes like this. I like to believe that under my watch, the Greenville Times was an impeccable source of very precise and entertaining news.
It would all be for naught though because even though I graduated with damn near perfect marks, had the experience necessary to take on a job in this field, and had great recommendations from professors, nobody was hiring in this field at all when I got out in the late 1990's and perhaps this is a good thing because the industry would completely collapse in the following 10 years. There was a time that being an editor or creative director were very prestigious, highly-paid, and sought after jobs. These days, these positions don't really exist anymore and much of the news we get is just chugged out rapid fire in a clickbait sort of way. This is part of the reason why so much news is "fake news" these days. The headlines are intentionally misleading to get you to click on it.
There was a time though where great effort was put into having and end product that not only was factual, but also looked nicely put together. Those were simpler times I guess. These days we are expected to consume so much information in a day that we likely wouldn't even notice spelling errors or misplaced images. During my time as an editor for a newspaper with a weekly circulation of about 30,000 units though, I saw and detected it all.
I'm glad I did it, but am even gladder (which actually IS a word and is used correctly here!) that I was never offered the opportunity to enter this field in a professional sense. I would have been laid off just like 98% of the others in that field were.
