Give Me a Sign

Real sign seen off Ocean Avenue in San Francisco.

Um, if you're a psychic, shouldn't you have at least one spirit from the netherworld who can correct your spelling?

SF Examiner Saves Money, Cancels Spell-Check

The front page of this morning's San Francisco Examiner, the Left Coast's own little right-wing tabloid, gives us a preview of what journalism will be like in the next year or two, as newspapers lay off more and more of their staff. See the cover above to witness their spell-check problems. Or perhaps it's a result of California's education system. I don't know; the mind boggles at all of the snarky comments I could make.

And yet ... I have sympathy. When I was an editor at my independent college daily, The Badger Herald, we once ended up in a journalism magazine's department displaying embarrassing headlines and bad prose. And The Onion, when it was only a University of Wisconsin-Madison coupon-supported humor rag, made great sport of the Herald's copy editing challenges.

But, enjoy a print newspaper while you can.