The Junk Drawer: Randomly bad ideas and poor journalistic execution

As we noted in an earlier post, the Junk Drawer is usually full of stuff that didn’t fit anywhere else but you still need. Consider some of these moments:

“Are we giving up on ‘Phrasing’ now?” As the hit TV show “Archer” often notes, something can be said in such a way as to evoke a dirty mind to play with it, even though it’s not likely the intent of the source. Still, SOMEBODY should have caught this odd verb choice in a headline about a “Toy Story” homage:

Woody

Sexual assault isn’t funny so don’t get cute: There are times to try headlines that will evoke wordplay, cultural touchstones or other rhetorical flourishes. When the topic is sexual assault, it’s best to play it as clear, concise and coherent as possible or else you might get this:

CosbyGuilty.jpg

Thankfully, this was just a proof and it never saw publication, but the use of the “Fat Albert” line of “Hey, Hey, Hey” was definitely a wince-worthy moment.

Welcome to wherever you are: When running a big story, you often want big art. A few nice shots of Coors Field to go along with “The Ultimate Visitors Guide to Coors Field” seemed like a great idea. Only one problem:

CoorsOOPS

If you look reeeeeeaallly carefully into the background of this photo (or stare at the zoomed shot in the lower right corner of the tweet), you can see the problem: This isn’t Coors Field in Colorado, but Citizens Bank Park in Philadelphia. The whole “Phillies” scoreboard really kind of clues you in. Nothing says, “We know everything about this ballpark” like not recognizing that the photo isn’t right.

Ow… Just… Ow: The designer’s motto is that “Design is content, and content is king.” This is all true because design is more than “just making things pretty.” Designers are required to show prominence and value through the placement of certain elements. They are also required to make sure things that don’t belong together don’t go together, like this unfortunate pairing of advertising and editorial copy:

SunSentinelGun

On the same page as a Parkland shooting story, you had an ad for the local gun show. Not exactly what the designer probably had in mind when beginning the day.

Just because it’s funny, it doesn’t mean it’s true: When errors lead to some unintentional humor, it is fantastic. This is especially true when someone is trying to promote something. The infamous “South Bend Pubic Schools” billboard remains a standard bearer for the fantastically awkward. This week, it looked like Kansas City joined the club of bad spellers:

Anally

As someone noted on Twitter, “You had one job…”

However funny, it turns out to be a fake. Officials at Visit KC said no such misspelling existed and even shared the original image, complete with proper spelling and the same silver car in the background.

Just one more reason to follow the journalist’s adage: If your mother says she loves you, go check it out.

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