I read lots of blogs — probably too many for my own health — but there are a dozen or so I religiously visit every day. One of those sites, I’m reluctant to admit, is FailBlog. It’s a collection of situations that shouldn’t have been photographed, videos of people acting stupidly, poorly worded advertisements and signage, and, occasionally, dumb headlines. Today, they posted a suggestion to check out “Probably Bad News,” a new blog that chronicles bad journalism and things that probably shouldn’t have gotten past our copy-editing brethren. If you were a fan of Jay Leno’s “headlines” but couldn’t stand Jay Leno, you ought to mouse over to probablybadnews.com/.
I don’t just visit FailBlog — I do have more refined taste. Here are a few sites that I’ve sent to my copy-editing friends in the past, beyond the good blogs found on ACES’ blogroll:
StuffJournalistsLike.com, which is run by journalists Christopher Ortiz and David Young. They’ve been at for at least a year and have written some pretty funny stuff.
OverheardInTheNewsroom.com, which has replaced Angry Journalists as the go-to site to vent. But it’s more than that, because we’ve all heard and said some pretty funny stuff in newsrooms.
Short Form Blog, a quick-hit news-of-the-day site run by Ernie Smith, who’s worked at the Virginian-Pilot and the Washington Post’s Express. He’s a good journalist and finds some rather interesting news, stats and quotes.
With stuff like this I wonder if it slipped by or someone was trying to ridicule this woman by showing her smoking while worrying that noise will harm her unborn child.
I once saw a photo of a lobbyist in a newspaper. He was sitting behind his conference room table. His image was reflected in its polished surface. There was a statue of a bull on the credenza behind him. If you were looking for symbolism, you could interpret it as “two-faced” and “bull—-.”