A Daily Mail Australia reporter has been sacked over the closing line of her story about Bachelor in Paradise cast member Florence Alexandra, in which she called the show’s contestants “vapid cunts”.
The story, with April Glover’s byline, was based on an Instagram post about a cosmetic procedure Alexandra had used, and finished with: “But most people who were educated at a high-school level know these vapid cunts only go on the shows to find mediocre Instagram fame and make a living promoting teeth whiteners and unnecessary cosmetic procedures.”
The line wasn’t removed for two hours, after it had been widely circulated on Twitter on Sunday.
A Daily Mail Australia spokesperson confirmed the journalist’s contract had been “terminated”, but did not respond to the questions of whether the story had been sub-edited at all (the answer to which is, surely, no).
So in honour of the lack of subbing, here are some of the great failures of news sub-editors:
WORLD IS FUKT
Our most famous local subbing error must be the Australian Financial Review’s front page “WORLD IS FUKT” headline, which went to print in early editions of the paper in 2014. The infamous front page had typos, holding headlines and text, as well as the “WORLD IS FUKT” line.
Contributor namy
Layout holding text can catch up with any publication — in an edition in October last year, The Guardian didn’t manage to replace “contributor namy” with the contributor’s “namy”.
Men are from Venus, women are from Mars
In January 2017, the Washington Post Express dedicated its front page to the Women’s March on Washington, following the inauguration of Donald Trump as president. Unfortunately they did this with an artist’s impression of the Greek sign for Mars, often used to represent men (it’s the circle and cross of Venus that is commonly used to represent women).
Unexceptable typo
Nine’s on-screen graphic earlier this year was truly …
NBC Chicago’s harsh obit for Knut
Knut, Berlin Zoo’s polar bear cub who reached some fame, was remembered fondly by NBC Chicago.
Valley Newss
The newspaper that got its own name wrong.
“Dixon sucks donkey dicks”
Deadspin dubbed it “sports writing’s filthiest fuck-up” — a young sports journalist’s in-joke to an under-pressure editor was left in his published report in the Gallatin News Examiner — ending his career as a journalist.
Dixon sucks donkey dicks and doesn’t wipe the shit off before practice. We like to keep him at the sweeper position so his sperm breath will stop people from penetrating to the goal. Speaking of penetrating, he prefers tall, red-headed guys. Told me to tell Kris he said “hello”.
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