The line, “To err is human, but to really foul things up requires a computer,” came to my mind the other day as I clicked on a link to a story about former NFL quarterback Brett Favre’s disclosure to a Congressional committee that he has Parkinson’s Disease.

The mobile version showed me this:

I have no damned idea what this video is going to show me, but you have to admit the juxtaposition of the two of these things isn’t all that great. It’s like, “Vikings rejoice in Favre’s inevitable and painful death!”

I saw a similar one of these things happen in terms of bad placement when I was looking at a story about former UW-La Crosse Chancellor Joe Gow’s foray into “adult entertainment” and how he’s not the only one likely to get outed:

So… Is this guy happy about his career in porn? Or, is he about to be outed? Or…

The little “ad” thing in the corner at least makes it clear that this guy isn’t necessarily attached to the story, but then again, who knows? Maybe it’s an ad for “Good Ol’ Neighbor Porn: Betcha didn’t know Charlie next door was a freak!” Either way, it’s not the greatest pairing on Earth.

In traditional print products, we used to have issues when stories would stack up next to unrelated stories. This one ran in a paper nearby and it remains a favorite of mine:

“How do you like your cat, there, Clark?” “Ah… medium rare… little pink in the middle…”

We’ve also had that bad ad placements and editorial pieces, which you can find here for your amusement. In the early days of AdSense and other systems that offered “like-minded matches” between ads and stories, I remember a story about two parents being convicted of forcing their kids to live in a closet for an extensive period of time.

The ad that populated next to the story was for closet organizers. Eeesh.

I get that we’re all trying to cram digital ads, video content and all sorts of other mess into whatever dying carcass of online newspapers Gannett will allow to remain on life support, but there has got to be a way to spot check these things to avoid embarrassing stuff like we’re seeing here.