Shootout at the Sunday Times

[dfisher]

Fun across the pond:

Start with a p-o'd writer.

And the sub-editors shoot back.

[Leslie]

"It was the final sentence. Final sentences are very, very important. A piece builds to them, they are the little jingle that the reader takes with him into the weekend."

Uh, no, they aren't. Get over yourself.

[Peter Fisk]

Of the many thousands of "final sentences" I dealt with in the newspaper biz, it's fair to say that most found their highest purpose when they ended up pasted to the bottom of a compositor's shoe somewhere around 1 a.m.

[LisaMc]

I've actually been instructed before not only to not cut from the bottom, but also to not "give away" the ending in the display type.

[Leslie]

Ditto, Lisa. It's the "kicker," don'tcha know, even if it's, let's say, a badly garbled paraphrase of a famous Dylan Thomas poem. Speaking from my own experience.

[Gerri Berendzen]

When I was a journalism student at Mizzou I wrote a trick ending story for the Missourian about a prosecutor who'd been named to a top 10 bachelor list.

Of course, the last sentence was slashed. Actually, the story was still fine, but the slashing was apparently done in the backshop (paste-up days) after the headline was written. A headline that played off the trick ending. So the headline made no sense.

As a copy editor, I'm not that fond of the device. It reminds me of this "don't do this" story I saw in my editing textbook, about a firefighter rescuing a baby from a fire, and it turned out the baby was a doll. But the incident did make me careful about cutting from the bottom willy-nilly.

[mbrooky]

Wow. That Giles (dude or dudette?) is a piece of work. If his/her letter is an indication of his or her's actual work, then he/she should be exiled to a weekly shopper's guide.

Loved the response!

To address the cutting-the-bottom issue: I learned the hard way years ago when the editor was cutting my stories' bottoms just to make it fit the hole......think inverted pyramid. Frankly, most readers don't get past the headline. Those that do read your lede may get a few more paragraphs into it, but few will get to the bottom if it is of any length. THAT is the real world, Mr./Ms. Giles Cunthard.