Fun_People Archive
2 May
BONG Bull Heads

Date: Tue,  2 May 95 23:46:57 PDT
From: Peter Langston <psl>
To: Fun_People
Subject: BONG Bull Heads

Excerpted-from: BONG Bull No. 320!
Via: mlinksva@netcom.com (Mike Linksvayer)


*********************************************************************
        The Burned-Out Newspapercreatures Guild's Newsletter
 <<<<<<<<>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> BONG Bull <<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<>>>>>>>>>
                      Charley Stough, Chief Copyboy
*********************************************************************
            Copyright (c) 1995 by BONG.  All rights reserved.

...

HEADS WILL ROLL.  Says Mike Hiltzik (hiltzik (at) news.latimes.com),
"Fellow staffers at the late lamented Buffalo Courier-Express may
remember the time back in the late 1970's when we fought off a
competitive challenge from the Buffalo News by suing the much-larger
paper on antitrust grounds. Convinced the case would be heard by one of
the local state judges (it was in fact heard by a federal judge imported
from downstate, who ruled in the Courier's favor) we at the C-X
proceeded to write a series of puff pieces on every judge we could find.
     "One of these revealed that a famously stern and irascible jurist
turned into a real pushover when surrounded by his loving family. The
headline: "Judge Loses Firmness When He Doffs His Robe."
     -- Gary Achterberg (Garyach (at) aol.com) of the The Janesville
(Wis.) Gazette reports: "The Green Bay (Wis.) Press-Gazette had a banner
head a year or two ago talking about Wisconsin Gov. Tommy Thompson's
line-item vetoes in the state budget bill. The headline was supposed to
read: "Thompson's pen is a sword." The only problem is "pen" and "is"
got run together into one word when the story was pasted up. The presses
actually rolled."
     -- Doug Ross assistant business editor of The Times of Munster,
Ind., says the April 19, 1995, issue of the Post-Tribune of Gary, Ind.
headlined: "Science wizzes to hit the road"
     -- Clever, too.  A former highschooler known electronically as
andersen (at) macmail.chem.washington.edu took, in those
bubblegummer days, a photo of an assistant coach timing sprinters
crossing the finish line.  The overline: "These are the souls that time
men's tries."
     -- Andy Thomas (SKYRUNER (at) delphi.com), assistant news editor
of the Valley Star in Harlingen, Texas,  advises, "You may have
heard of the story: some people in the town of Weslaco got upset that
the library had a copy of Stern's book Private Parts.  So they banned
that book from the library, and the library's director got fired.  One
of the initial stories led the local section and carried this headline
that I wrote:   "Weslaco library board removes Stern's `Parts.'" I first
wrote it as "Weslaco library board whacks Stern's `Parts.'" Everyone had
a good laugh but I had to tone it down."
     -- Irwin Block of the Montreal Gazette said its South Shore edition
illustrated the minefield of all deskers, the combo story, last week
with one headlined: "Muslims will usher in Year of the Pig on Monday."
As the ensuing correction noted, the Buddhists celebrated the Year of
the Pig while the Muslims, for whom pigs are anathema, were across town
observing the first day of the holy month of Ramadan.
     -- Mark Adams at Maui News reporteth the 4-H column of the San
Gabriel Valley Daily Tribune about a young man's livestock triumph: "Boy
enters sheep at fair."
     There also was the 72-point streamer for the street edition,
"Teamster Adivser Mudered," (all CQ).  Dang, and the headline fit so
well.

© 1995 Peter Langston