Pontiff has a ball while Atilla the Hun sleeps

Newspaper readers give a damn about the poor Subs who give the pages a shape and look

The old man who walked into the newsroom of a provincial newspaper holding a crumpled newspaper had a sense of urgency about him. He asked to see the News Editor. A Sub Editor ushered him into the NE’s cabin.
The graying, dour NE, as they are, looked up: “Yes?”
“This,” the old man said rather apologetically, opening the crumpled newspaper and pointing to a photo on the page, “is me!.”
Blood drained out from the NE’s face. His jaw collapsed. Staring at him from the obituary page was the man in front of him! The Sub standing on the side covered his mouth, lest the grin would show.
Newspaper howlers, they happen everyday. Healthy men are killed for no reason and dead men walk with a spring in their step.
A just-retired professor who took the night train to his far away home town was received at the railway station the next afternoon by his well wishers with a wreath. Apparently a careless Sub mixed up news of farewells and deaths and killed the poor professor in the day’s newspaper.
Not many readers know how a newspaper gets its shape and content. All of them know of the reporters whose names are emblazoned above their reports. But hardly anyone gives a damn about the poor, unlamented Subs who slog from evening to past midnight to get the grammar and flow of a story right, rechecking facts and finally giving the pages a shape and look.
Since it is a thankless task performed under pressure the temperature in a News Room is the highest in any newspaper office.
Well-produced newspapers have only their excellent production team to thank for, and they are managed by tough-as-nails dictators, known as NEs. Subs form the faceless, anonymous newspaper production army. Good Subs are considered worth their weight in gold and all NEs swear by them. But they are hard to come by. They can make or break any NE’s day.
Since newspapers are considered the record of history-in-the-making, the mistakes also enter history. Therefore, the NE has his work cut out daily – zero tolerance of mistakes, which is easier said than done in the pressure-cooker atmosphere. Shouting, pulverising glares and biting sarcasm are some of the everyday torture the poor Subs endure during the NE’s daily drive to get the facts right.
With this daily dose of abuse, the poor Sub is often left wondering whether taking up the job was part of his Karma.
Therefore, it is no surprise that most Subs have nice ‘names’ for the boss. Many of them are unprintable. The more charitable are ‘Attila the Hun, Hitler, beast, sarcy-barky and so on.
But then the Subs are not babes in the wood. Very resourceful, they are ‘Artful Dodgers’ when it comes to excuses for mistakes. This excuse made my jaw drop: “Sir, I just edited the copy. I didn’t read it!”
Instances of Subs short-circuiting reports are quite common, more often it is because of the time pressure, which leaves little time to think. Sample this instance. The norm in this region when reporting about Jerusalem is to put the prefix ‘Occupied’ (by Israel).
Imagine my consternation when a Sub added the prefix to “the Fatah leader insisted on having ‘Occupied’ Jerusalem as the capital of an independent Palestine state!”
And then there was this Sub in the Delhi newspaper who had a lovely idea on the pontiff’s job profile. Sample this blasphemous headline: ‘Pope beautifies nun.’ Obviously the NE was fast asleep!
New Subs are generally cautioned on some of the ‘dangerous’ headline words, such as ‘public’ and ‘shift’.
James Scotty Reston, America’s top journalist of the 20th century, in his autobiography had written of a Sub who composed a headline: ‘Man falls off bridge, breaks both legs’. Unfortunately for the Sub the ‘g’ in the bridge didn’t make it to the headline.
So how would have the people of Delhi reacted when one leading newspaper reported in bold print: ‘Pubic clocks to be placed at main roundabouts’!
This one from my old Delhi newspaper was luckily stopped just in time: ‘J&K capital shi*s under tight security’
When it comes to bad luck all bets are off. The Financial Times once conducted a multi-page survey of Egypt in 1981. Unluckily for the daily, the survey, which was already into print, came out the same morning President Anwar Sadat was assassinated. The headline of the survey: ‘President Sadat appears to have ridden out the crisis’.
But then for every such instance there has also been wonderful journalism.
Sample this headline on the report on a loony who escaped from an asylum, raped a woman and was on the run:
‘Nut
Screws,
Bolts’!

This article was published in Oman Tribune