A fate worse than death awaits Nuts
There’s never been much love lost between the weekly lads’ mag
teams, but with just days to go before their debut circulation figures,
the gloves are well and truly off. In their, er, highly informative
“news” spread about how easy it would be to kill 10,000 people in
London, Zoo journalists explained the devastating consequences of a
phosgene attack on an inner-city office tower block.
For many workers, the article explained, it would mean a “long, slow, painful decline before their inevitable death”.
“The lucky ones would die within an hour or two. Most would spend 10
or 12 hours coughing up blood and, eventually, their own lungs.
Their eyeballs would melt and they would begin rotting from the
inside. Death would follow within a day or so. And that’s the lucky
ones. You’d pity the ones who survived in this tower block for more
than a few days.”
And the accompanying illustration chosen by Emap’s finest? IPC’s King’s Reach Tower.
Home to… Nuts magazine.
Gone to the dogs
A lovely spread on celebrity dogs from Hello!. Surprisingly,
Madonna’s management are not best pleased with the placement of the ad
for her concert. “They’ve gone berserk”, apparently.
Look out for fawning features featuring Her Madgesty in forthcoming issues.
Moore ‘edits’ paper
Michael Moore’s hit documentary film Fahrenheit 9/11 is suffering a
backlash from critics unimpressed by the factual liberties he appears
to have taken.
Latest to join the fray is The Pantagraph, a weekly in Bloomington,
Illinois. A scene early in the movie shows headlines related to the
contested 2000 presidential election. It includes a shot of The
Pantagraph’s 19 December, 2001, front page, with the prominent
headline, “Latest Florida recount shows Gore won election”.
Only trouble is, the headline in question never appeared on the
front page, nor with anything like such prominence. In fact, it was a
headline from the letters page, blown up.
The Pantagraph wants an apology and $1 damages.
“If he wants to ‘edit’ The Pantagraph,” the paper says, “he should apply for a copy-editing job.”
I’m sure the Reverend John Lyon and Bungle the clown were delighted
that their church fete photo was used on page one of the Chichester and
Selsey Journal. But their joy may have been a little tempered by its
position relative to the headline of the adjacent story.
BBC boss unhappy with clippings service
Things had been going so well at the BBC’s new multimillion-pound
building in Leeds. Then head of regional and local programmes, Tamsin
O’Brien, went for a coffee in the canteen.
“I have just been down to our beautiful new building to see how
Radio Leeds staff are getting on with their training,” she wrote in a
subsequent e-mail to staff. “We were all sitting in the soft area of
the canteen when I saw, lying in the middle of the table, a disgusting
TOENAIL. It had obviously been pulled off and just left there for us
all to enjoy as we drank our coffee.
“I am happy to discuss whether or not we eat at our desks, etc.
There will be NO negotiation though over things like toenails. Whoever
you are, I hope you are ashamed.”
It’s not quite as bad as the dummy caption error
that cost the Southern Reporter’s editor his job (Press Gazette, 30
July), but this effort is from the Newcastle Advertiser in
Staffordshire. It’s a pity that Amanda didn’t get around to writing the
headline for this Nick Hancock story. They thought her subbing career
was all over… it is now.
Travel journalist John Carter sent us this picture
he took on a recent visit to Sarajevo. While it’s certainly true that
“the first casualty when war comes is truth “, there seem to have been
a few other casualties on this plaque. The English language, for
example.
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