A few thoughts on the weenies at the Tyler Morning Telegraph

 And, no, I'm NOT talking about the one weenie who actually rewrote the caption on the AP photo of the Trump Trainers storming the Capitol in the Jan. 6 insurrection.

Per discussion at the Dallas Observer and elsewhere, I'm talking about the weenies in the newspaper version of C suites who have tolerated this.

First, per the links above and elsewhere, NOBODY believes the bullshit in the unsigned editorial at the second link, from Jan. 20, or the bullshit comments by the paper's publisher and others, from Jan. 12 in the first link.

Here's the full Jan. 20 editorial. Let's quote from the bullshit in detail. It's very necessary to do so.

We made a promise earlier that we would make a full investigation into the matter, and we have. These are our findings.

Let’s start by answering the question that many of you have asked us since the false caption ran: How did this happen?

We have spoken with the staff members working that night to gather as complete an account as possible. We have also compared those accounts to both the newspaper’s production system, which logs all of the changes made to the paper as it is put together, and to the paper’s internal messaging system, which staff members working on the paper use to direct changes and edits to pages as they are proofed.

How did this happen? To the best of our belief, it was a joke taken literally. We found that no staff member acted in a malicious manner to deliberately put misinformation in your paper. Instead, what we found was a misguided and misunderstood joke put on the page when it should not have been.

The correct photo caption was put into our production system with the photo and sat untouched for more than an hour until it was changed by one of our page designers. That page designer had submitted a draft of the page to our messaging system so that others working that night could read over it and check for mistakes and typos. A message on our system from another page designer directed that person to change the caption to the false one that ran. A third page designer also commented on the thread, saying the page looked good. The original page designer made the requested change and sent the page to be printed.

There were several obvious issues raised by this. First and foremost, no one looked at the final revision of the page before it was sent. Had an editor or a designer looked at the page to OK the final revisions, this error would have been caught and corrected. There was no person acting as a final fail-safe that night.

We must also address the specific request from a designer to change the caption. We believe that request was intended to be a joke based on the conversations we had with staff members working that night, but we must also acknowledge that the designer made no special effort to distinguish the joke from an ordinary request. There was no “LOL.” There was no special emoji used to denote sarcasm. There was nothing to let on to the fact that a joke was being made.

One of the first rules most page designers learn is to never put a joke on the page as a placeholder or otherwise, because it will invariably end up in print.

We also know that sometimes it can be hard to distinguish tone from the written word. One of our page designers has learned these lessons the hard way.

We also want to address the fact that the page designer who made the actual change on the page did not push back against the requested revision. We know sometimes, in the busyness of our work schedules, things can slip past our brains and mistakes can happen. It is incumbent upon us to stop and examine the things we are being asked to do. Had that page designer taken a beat to remember what the Associated Press was actually reporting, this would not have happened.

Disciplinary measures have been taken with those involved in this mistake, but ultimately we feel there is a larger issue beyond any one individual. This was a collective failure, and it’s one for which we take full responsibility as a newspaper. We are supposed to have protocols in place to prevent such things from happening. We did not. That has been changed.

Here is what we have put in place to hold us accountable: Between the time a story or story element is given to a page designer by an editor, placed on the page by that designer and then printed, it will have at least two people looking over the actual page before it is sent to press — with one of those people responsible for checking the final revision for all of that day’s pages and signing off on the issue.

Our new protocols call for page designers, once they have finished laying out a page, to provide a copy of the page to the rest of the newsroom for viewing. Any proposed revisions can be made at that time, and the page’s designer will make them. The page designer will then provide a revised copy of the page for approval no matter how small the change.

Each night, we will have one person acting as the designated person who will send pages.

OK then. First, an initial big big picture response, also posted on the Telegraph's Facebook page:

Nobody who knows how a paper works, or should work, on the copy desk, even with any additional cuts you've had in the past 9 months, believes this bullshit editorial. When are you going to tell the full story, then fire somebody (or more than 1) over the "antifa" cutline?

I mean, do you really expect people to believe the Telegraph's news editor didn't take final look at pages in the first place, previously, especially since this was P1? Second, the particular copy editor didn't write, on the printed out version of P1 that got sent to whomever did look at it, "Hey, here's what that cutline really should say," or some other jokey comment?

Bullshit on top of bullshit eventually becomes a shit sandwich.

Now, some details.

First, an aside on firings. Even if the copy editor who did this had only been on the job two days, he or she should know that you don't do such shit without flagging it, per my comment to the Telegraph's comment it had no flagging. On a story of this magnitude, yes, the economy sucks, and the newspaper economy sucks even more. It's still fireable and the person should be fired. (I assume that "learned these lessons the hard way" does NOT include a firing as part of that "hard way," or the newspaper world would have heard about it by now.)

Now, is that believable? Let's start with the word "believe" in the Telegraph editorial.

I don't believe this. Per the "additional cuts," even if an actual news editor wasn't running the copy desk that night, you're telling me you had no designated replacement? (I'm assuming the Telegraph still had a local desk and that this isn't a Craphouse-type outsourced operation.)

And, on the other elements that are now being put into place? What, they weren't already there? Having worked at a seven-day daily of similar size (albeit before another decade of cuts at daily papers), that was SOP where I was at.

Maybe it's time for the Telegraph to cut its page count or number of days of print editions, if it hasn't already. (And, no, I'm not a big fan of e-editions.)