Thursday, July 15, 2010

Herald's Chicken: Shoreland, Sutherland, Heartland, Who?

posted by chicago pop


Hyde Park Herald Headline Confuses the Shoreland Hotel with
Sutherland Apartments

This week's botched Herald headline makes us think that Dr. Seuss is running the news desk, or at least has his hand in everything the paper writes that has to do with the Shoreland Hotel: "Antheus buys Shoreland from Heartland."

Aside from being completely erroneous -- Antheus already owns the Shoreland -- this headline has the Seussian virtue of being a fun nursery rhyme, especially when you throw in the Sutherland Apartments, which the Herald habitually confuses with the Shoreland, as they did in their banner headline of September 9, 2009.

Dr. Seuss says: Shoreland, Sutherland, Heartland, Who? You said Shoreland, and Sutherland, Too!

Maybe a repeat of this gaffe twice in one year is why the Herald website is still running the July 7, 2010 issue?

Or perhaps everyone was just too giddy over the journalistic coup achieved with the wonderfully dramatic headline over Sam Cholke's banner article having to do with the preservation of the Chicago Theological Seminary in its pristine state, stained glass windows included:

Hyde Park Hyperbole, Volume 128, Issue 28

Tabloid journalism of the purest sort: behold the University as executioner, it's face hidden in the shadow of a cowl, ready to raise its skeleton arm in order to drop the axe of demolition across the neck of the old Chicago Theological Seminary building. Or, is it the CTS, which wanted to move its own stained glass windows from the old to the newer building? Would moving pieces of the building around be an execution, or just a desecration? Or, since the University's decision to buy it is the reason the building isn't going to be completely razed, perhaps the University is executing itself? Just who is the executioner, and what is being executed?

Certainly not an informative, fact-based headline.

Mr. Cholke, or whoever came up with this headline, was undoubtedly drunk with the poetic euphoria of a wildly inaccurate though colorful metaphor, enough so to botch the execution of the Sutherland headline on page 3.

The chicken at Herald's is deep fried and crispy this summer, for sure.

4 comments:

SK Barnum, MD said...

he who lives in glass houses (or hospitals) should take heed:

gaff: some kind of metal spike

gaffe: the kind of error you're trying to describe.

Richard Gill said...

The Herald's quite imperious
It takes itself so serious
For Herald, Shore's the same as Suther
So take your pick, which one you d'ruther

A question, please, from this old bard,
Is headline-spelling oh, so hard?
The Herald, is it dumb or clumsy?
How else could they make Rumsey "Rumsy?"

O Herald, you're a laugh a minute
There's no other way to spin it
With mirth and ha-ha we are stricken
There's always more for Herald's Chicken.

Unknown said...

It's really sad when you think about it. My high school newspaper was better written, and had more journalistic integrity than the Herald.

Richard Gill said...

What's to be expected from a publication that throws a hissy fit when it isn't accorded a special status? Recall the editorial of August 19, 2009, in which the Herald bunched up its petticoats, stomped its foot and sniffed that it was “very, very piqued.” This piquedness arose because the University of Chicago had apparently not given the Herald and its disciples special notice, above and beyond what everyone already knew, that demolition of Harper Court was beginning.

The Herald was not accorded its due; it was denied something, perhaps sufficient time to organize its troops for an angry photo op. Someone should remind the Herald that it’s hard to be a newspaper and a mouthpiece at the same time. One might even call it delusional. That’s why Herald’s Chicken constantly has new material on which it can feast. The Herald’s misstatement of facts and the bad spelling are simply gravy.