Here’s a gem from the Paisley Daily Express. You’ll want to read the whole thing, but especially the sixth paragraph. [Update 1: for shame! They killed the story. But you can still see the page thanks to the might of the Google cache]
Now, on first reading you might think this is a terrible journalistic lapse. The journo friend who sent me the link certainly thought so. But might it be a radical departure in style… a deliberate use of the kind of language many readers might use to describe the story? And might newspapers sell more if they dropped the standard bag of cliches, and started writing like this?
[Update 2: given they've whipped the story off their site, it appears that this was a lapse, or that a highup at Scottish and Universal newspapers - the paper's owners - took fright and demanded it be removed. If you know what happened, do let me know...]
I’m guessing on a work experience kid whose overseer was off sick that day. But yes, twatting marvellous stuff.
Hire them..then fit a webcam at Guardian towers.
I’m so proud of my local paper. It’s class…
Let me think about it. Uh…maybe. I HAVE seen worse. And it WAS clear. And I have this gut feeling that it WAS accurate. Hmmm…
TBH I think what happened is that someone wrote a draft of the piece in their own voice and hit publish without realising they hadn’t edited it. I prefer your explanation Neil, but I would not be at all surprised to see the piece republished when the editor notices.
It’s wonderful. It’s the future. Who says all newspapers have to toe an invisible register line?
From Bart’s Inner Child:
Bart: Lis, everyone in town is acting like me. So why does it suck?
Lisa: It’s simple, Bart: you’ve defined yourself as a rebel, and in the absence of a repressive milieu your societal nature’s been co-opted.
http://www.snpp.com/episodes/1F05.html
Has Graham (post above) ever worked at a newspaper? We don’t just “hit publish” like web-based amateurs.
Admittedly that would be “on” a newspaper, not “at” one sunnynick.
Whatever it was, it’s gone now – someone obviously realised that things were amiss. I feel like I missed out…
I really liked that – I can remember a few sleepless nights worrying I had ‘changed it back’ after messing about with copy, possibly to include the word “twat.”
Thankfully it never got through. I can just imagine the bollocking that would have followed.
Fantastic. I pity whoever received the monstering though…
I once worked as an online reporter for a now-defunct Scottish business newspaper, and our copy went online without going through the subs.
Which meant the article I wrote about the water regulator referred to it as Oftwat until a kind reader pointed out the error 0_o