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December 2007
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Happy New Year!
posted by Steve Sebelius
Monday, Dec. 31, 2007 at 7:06 PM

We were going to blog more today — really, we were. But events at CityLife just got in the way. It’s a lot more work to put out that paper than you might imagine. In any case, we’ll be back on Wednesday with all-new blogs (just as Law & Order returns with all new episodes — yay!). Until then, have a happy and safe New Year’s Eve, and, as always, thanks for reading.

Uncommon decency
posted by Steve Sebelius
Monday, Dec. 31, 2007 at 10:51 AM

Everybody knows the Review-Journal is a family newspaper. Ward Cleaver’s family, in fact. (After all, the newspaper in 1993 refused to publish For Better or For Worse when that comic strip featured a 17-year-old character coming to terms with the fact that he was gay.)

But we were still surprised to see R-J editors redact from a headline the word "damn," over a year-in-review package of Jim Day’s editorial cartoons. The story quoted legendary Boss Tweed lamenting how even illiterate constituents could understand those "damned pictures." But the headline replaced "damned" with this punctuation: "#%@*"

That’s curious: If "damned" can appear in a story (and even worse has appeared in direct quotes in the R-J over the years) why not a headline? Especially over a story in which plenty of "damned pictures" are published, sure to draw the attention of young and old alike.

And when did "damned" become a really bad word, anyway? It’s not like Boss Tweed was dropping the dreaded F-bomb. Or the M-F bomb. Or the A-bomb. Or the S-bomb. Or the MFCSSW-bomb. Seriously, people.

Anyway, our thought was that if it was cool in the copy, it’s acceptable for the headline, yet another difference between the R-J and our little blog.

 


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