What was that again?

Putting together a newspaper, whether it be national or small-town, is a BIG JOB. Millions of words have to be spelled correctly, names have to be right, photos have to match stories, headlines have to entice the reader to read -- and all of these are subject to criticism by us, the reading public.

It's not right, but that's just how it is.

Speaking of headlines...I ran across a few headlines recently in my local daily that made me pause and ask, "What was that again?" They just hit me as funny, or confusing, and I thought I'd share:

American
orders 460
new airplanes

I thought to myself, "Holy cow, that must have been some wealthy American."

Preparedness net stretched taut across county

Shoot, how could I have missed THAT?

Hess remains
exhumed, then
cremated

Sounds to me like ole Hess escaped and didn't want to go back, but now he's cremated and that's that.

Bjorn roars in return to site of 2003 meltdown

Well, since I don't understand a WORD of that one, it must be sports related.

And finally, my favorite one of the week:

Orange man
gets prison time
for fatal crash

I thought as a society we were way beyond identifying people by race or color. It doesn't matter if the person is black, white, brown, yellow or orange. What matters is that the story tells us who, what, where, when and why, and in a manner that doesn't make us think, "Who is running this paper anyway -- third graders?"

(By the way, the man was from Orange, Texas, and wasn't really orange.)

Okay, I'll shut up now.