The English language is filled with double entendres. Innocent words that can have not-so-innocent other meanings. One of the old adages of newsrooms is “It helps to have a dirty mind when editing a newspaper.”
For example, our new wine feature had the name The Wine Tool. Tool apparently being a synonym in some circles for corkscrew or opener. Not where I come from. Or some others. So, we’re changing it.
Over the weekend, we received this email from a reader in regards to a story that ran Saturday on a service project at Atkins High School. I have kept the grammar and spelling from the original.
Did you notice the artical in Saturday’s local section re: the teacher & her students riting a book..One girl is “giving the finger” sign.
I don’t this she has learned much.
You may want to tell the
teacher her student ruined the whole concept of the artical, and I cannot believe the JOURNAL did not catch this before it was published.
Attached, you will find the picture in question. I can tell you that we look hard at photos for these sorts of things and for unintended images. Occasionally something unintended gets through. I’ve looked carefully at this photo, albeit after publication, and I disagree with the emailer. Yes, you can see the girl’s middle finger, but it’s pretty clear—at least to me—from the position of the other fingers that she isn’t giving the finger.
That said, there’s certainly a less-confusing way to hold a drawing.
And the question of the day: You’re the editor. You see this image, which some readers might find confusing. Do you run it, even if you believe that the confusion is unintended and misconstrued?
Your host is Ken Otterbourg, the managing editor at the Winston-Salem Journal. It's a forum to discuss the media, from 
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