Funniest headlines of all time

These classics remind us that the best "head" writers have the dirtiest minds.

Worth watching

Just finished watching "Control Room," a documentary about Al Jazeera, an Arab-language news outlet. It told the story of the network, as well as the story of how the War in Iraq was managed by the U.S. military. I got the impression that Al Jazeera covered the war better than most of the U.S. news outlets. I highly recommend this movie.

And some sad news. I had forgotten that a correspondent from Al Jazeera was killed when U.S. planes bombed the station's Baghdad offices. It just reminds you of how deadly journalism can be. Very sad.

Did you Chek that?

I love newspapers because they're permanent. A Web site might be edited every five minutes, but a printed newspaper is here to stay. And that's why mistakes in print are so much worse than those online or on video. Of course, they all stink in my book.

One of my former news writing students found this headline, from our local paper, The (Greeley) Tribune. The name of the writer is Anton Chekhov. I know it's a Russian name, and those Russian names are so hard to spell. But that's why we fact check. And when it comes to fact-checking, names are the most important thing to check, or Chekhov, if you will. And fact-checking is rather easy, thanks to the Web. All you have to do is Google the name as you think it's spelled, and Google will come up with the right name. That's what I did for this post. I put in "Checkhov" and Google corrected me.

I guess nobody bothered to tell the editors at The Tribune, because as I write this, four days after publication of the offending headline, the paper's Web site still contains the misspelling.

Student newspaper threatened

Virginia Tech officials have threatened to pull the funding for the school's newspaper unless the paper stops accepting anonymous Web comments. The general manager of the Collegiate Times says her paper will sue if the school pulls it $70,000 in annual funding.

I support the paper, of course. Although I'm not a fan of anonymous posts, it's standard practice at professional papers. I don't think officials at Virginia Tech have the right to pull the funding over this. The purpose of a student newspaper is to teach students how to be professional journalists. I believe that campus papers should be held to the same high standards of ethics and fact checking that other papers must meet, and I also believe they should be allowed the same First Amendment rights as professional papers.

And look -- somebody agrees with me.

Although the Collegiate Times is independent, it still gets money from the school. That's pretty common. The Mirror, UNC's student paper, has a similar arrangement.

Oh no he didn't

I'm listening to The World is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-first Century by Thomas L. Friedman. In this 2005 book, Friedman, a columnist for The New York Times, explores how technology and globalization have "flattened" the globe.

It's a good book so far, but I have a big problem with the editing. Friedman quotes someone as saying that the flattening of the world is a fundamental development equal to "Gutenberg's invention of the printing press, the rise of the nation state, and the industrial revolution."

News flash: Gutenberg didn't invent the printing press. In about 1440, Johannes Gutenberg invented a press that used a system of movable type. This made printing cheaper and faster. Movable type and the printing press both were invented in Asia long before Gutenberg came along.

I do wish otherwise intelligent people would stop reinforcing the myth that Gutenberg invented the printing press. Especially if those people are journalists. They should know better.

Students take to the blogosphere

Once again my students are blogging. See the links list on the left. According to one of our textbooks, "Journalism Next: A Practical Guide to Digital Reporting and Publishing" by Mark Briggs, every college student should have a blog. I hope these stand out for their great writing and insight.

We are also in the planning stages of the class Web site. We'll be updating last year's site, the 410 Forum. It should be online next month. I'm planning more photos and a cleaner look to the site. Students are in the process of writing day in the life stories. I think these stories will be fun to read.

I'll have the fried ricc

Was driving back from Aurora (don't ask) the other day and saw the following on a sign:

Chiness Food

I believe it was a restaurant, but I'm not sure what they're selling. Any ideas?

They 'Lost' the punctuation, too

I'm in heaven right now because I just watched the first episode of the final season of my all-time favorite show, "Lost." I don't have cable, so I had to watch it on abc.com. The story is so good I hardly noticed that the picture quality is only fair.

I bring this up because of an egregious punctuation error that I had to watch during several commercials. It was a Verizon/ABC ad. Here's the sentence:

Will the islands origins be revealed?

The word "islands" should be possessive, so there should be an apostrophe before the "s." Without the apostrophe, it's just plural. So the sentence doesn't make sense.

Understanding punctuation might seem so 20th century, but it means a lot when your message is going over the Internet for millions to see.

Sitting in on history

Today marks the 50th anniversary of the Greensboro sit-ins, a pivotal moment in the civil rights movement. Back then, blacks weren't served at lunch counters in the South. Four North Carolina A&T students sat down and ordered coffee and doughnuts and refused to move until they were served. They were arrested. Word of their peaceful protest spread, thanks to newspaper and network TV news, and more students took up the cause throughout the South.

Howell Raines covered the civil rights movement and later served as executive editor of The New York Times. In an op-ed piece in today's Times, Raines, recounts how the news media helped fuel the sit-in movement.

It took only one national telecast of Nashville students being assaulted at the lunch counters to demonstrate that segregation everywhere depended on the unconstitutional application of police brutality.

He also discusses how today's news media, so different than that of 1960, might have affected the movement differently.

Surely the civil rights movement would have been hampered by the politicized, oppositional journalism that flows from Fox News and the cable talk shows.

Being a good journalist means being ethical and responsible. It also means having an awareness of the injustices of the past, and of the present.