Each issue, the Columbia Journalism Review has something called The Lower Case, which is a collection of botched headlines and unfortunate juxtapositions of stories in papers around the country. They’re equal opportunity. Small dailies and weeklies get included. So do august publications, such as The New York Times. My sense is that there’s a special glee when the majors make a screwup.
Anyway, a reader said our local front from today warrants inclusion. It’s attached as a JPEG above. The criticism is the adjacency of a story about an arrest in a burning case where a body was found and a feature photo package about a pep rally/bonfire at West Forsyth High School. Another caller said the placement wasn’t funny or ironic but callous.
Personally, I think it’s a stretch to tie the two together. But that said, with the clarity of hindsight, I would have moved the arrest story to another spot on the page, because I can see how people might link the two.
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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