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Only a college paper could get away with it…

And perhaps it’s best to get it out of our system while we’re young. Err, when I was? lol.

The business reporter this morning was nice enough to point out this gem of a refer on the front of the Purdue Exponent (the student paper):

Exponent's 'shitty' headline

In case you missed it, the headline on the front page of the exponent reads: “City has issued no tickets for shitty ordinance.” (I downloaded the PDF so you can see where it ran. Look in the lower right corner.) The headline inside and online is a bit more tame, as is the story itself.

We all had a great laugh at it. I texted one of the editors over there to ask if this was on purpose or if someone was getting yelled at today. The reply? The boss OK’d it, and they decided to have some fun with it. She ended with, “I love college.”

I texted back, I miss college. And I guess it’s not so bad as the whole “F Bush!” fiasco, which ironically the editor I texted and I had just talked about this past weekend. At least it was a play on words appropriate to the story subject, and hey, it is college. Do it while you can. Because you won’t get away with that in “the real world.”

I am reminded of an instance at the Stater where I probably reacted a little too harshly to the use of the word WTF in a headline. In hindsight (a year’s time and 350+ miles distance from it), maybe it, too, was just a fun way to get the point across. And I suspect that headline, like this refer today, probably got a few more students to want to know what was so important that it broke the “no cursing unless absolutely necessary to get to the essence of the story/character” rule. I know once I got over laughing, I read the story.

I guess if the college newspaper is meant to prepare the next generation of journalists, maybe getting these things out of their system is part of that training.

UPDATE: fixed the PDF link. oops.

One Response to “Only a college paper could get away with it…”

  1. Josette Says:

    God save the Exponent. I miss that paper a lot.