Oh, I get it! Hah!

jjmoney62 · **Posted:** Wed Jul 14, 2004 9:19 am

Can you suggest an alternative?

SeaRaven · **Posted:** Wed Jul 14, 2004 11:03 am

Gee, I don't know if anyone could improve on this:... joins Tuesday's temperatures in climbing to peak levels.By the way:Â· Were temperatures at "peak levels" if they fell "shy of the record"?Â· Temperatures "climb" every day. Thatâ€™s one of several reasons why the wordplay fails. Â· Is the guy in the pic really "ascending"? That sure looks like a descent to me.Oh, but the design desk wants us to make a "clever" connection between the weather forecast and this random photo.

jjmoney62 · **Posted:** Wed Jul 14, 2004 12:39 pm

I understand many editors' disdain for clever overlines. I usually don't agree with those arguments, but I can empathize.However, some words have to go over the photo. It's the newspaper's style. I'm putting you (or others) on the spot to suggest an alternative.

Phillip Blanchard · **Posted:** Wed Jul 14, 2004 12:56 pm

The best I could say about "A day of climbing temperatures" is that I've seen worse.
The problem here isn't so much with the overline as with the decision to use a picture of a rock climber (helpfully identified as a "rock-climbing enthusiast") as a weather photo.

Oeditpus Rex · **Posted:** Wed Jul 14, 2004 1:20 pm

Apparently there were no available children playing in sprinklers.

SeaRaven · **Posted:** Wed Jul 14, 2004 1:30 pm

The Rocky is way ahead of you, Oed:

Tasha Gurule, 10, plays in the sprinkler with her half brother, Lonzel Smith, 2, in the front yard of their family's apartment. Temperatures in Denver topped out at a withering 99 degrees Tuesday. [ July 14, 2004: Message edited by: SeaRaven ]

jmcg · **Posted:** Wed Jul 14, 2004 4:35 pm

<blockquote>quote:<hr>Originally posted by blanp:
The best I could say about "A day of climbing temperatures" is that I've seen worse.
The problem here isn't so much with the overline as with the decision to use a picture of a rock climber (helpfully identified as a "rock-climbing enthusiast") as a weather photo.<hr></blockquote>Isn't every day, every place, a day of climbing temperatures? I mean. the sign rises and its gets progressively warmer (or not quite as cold ...)
till around dusk, right?

12thfret · **Posted:** Wed Jul 14, 2004 5:14 pm

How about:
Roped into writing another weather caption?
Or
Much too far from the nearest alpine meadow
Or
Between a rock and a hot place
?

Bumfketeer · **Posted:** Wed Jul 14, 2004 6:39 pm

This is what happens when copy desks are pressured to come up with "clever" heds for stupid weather packages and the stupid photos that inherently arrive with them.I'd say this hed is as good as any or as bad as any.

SeaRaven · **Posted:** Wed Jul 14, 2004 6:41 pm

<blockquote>quote:<hr>Originally posted by 12thfret:
How about:
Roped into writing another weather caption?
Or
Much too far from the nearest alpine meadow
Or
Between a rock and a hot place
?<hr></blockquote>Don't you have some Blackstone Valley copy to spike or something?

12thfret · **Posted:** Wed Jul 14, 2004 7:05 pm

No meadows in the valley, just brownfields. But the Sheriff of Nottingham got his hiking papers

paulwiggins · **Posted:** Wed Jul 14, 2004 8:11 pm

This SMH article from 2003 manages to turn a weather package into smething more than everyone knows already.
The 46 degrees in the last par converts to 114.8 degrees Fahrenheit
Our colleagues in the west did the good old stand-by pic: frying an egg on a car hood.[ July 14, 2004: Message edited by: Paul Wiggins ]

Oeditpus Rex · **Posted:** Wed Jul 14, 2004 11:36 pm

<blockquote>quote:<hr>Originally posted by SeaRaven:
[QB]The Rocky is way ahead of you, Oed:

Tasha Gurule, 10, plays in the sprinkler with her half brother, Lonzel Smith, 2, in the front yard of their family's apartment. Temperatures in Denver topped out at a withering 99 degrees Tuesday. [QB]<hr></blockquote>Sprinkler...? Oh, yeah -- back there behind Tasha. See it? Look closer. OK, see it now?

12thfret · **Posted:** Thu Jul 15, 2004 12:08 am

Page 1 picture shows 7-year-old girl and her grandfather being treated by EMTs after being hit by separate foul balls on consecutive pitches at a game. Guy was hit on bridge of nose, but nobody was seriously injured.
Caption reads "Two fouls ... two strikes''

SeaRaven · **Posted:** Thu Jul 15, 2004 2:11 am

<blockquote>quote:<hr>Originally posted by 12thfret:
Page 1 picture shows 7-year-old girl and her grandfather being treated by EMTs after being hit by separate foul balls on consecutive pitches at a game. Guy was hit on bridge of nose, but nobody was seriously injured.
Caption reads "Two fouls ... two strikes''<hr></blockquote>That's almost worth the 50 cents that your paper charges to view its Web site. WTF is up with that, anyway? Is there quality porn in there or what?

12thfret · **Posted:** Thu Jul 15, 2004 3:13 pm

It would have been worth the dough if it had read
There's no crying in baseball
Anyway it's on Page 1 and that oughtta be free

ndugan1 · **Posted:** Thu Jul 15, 2004 5:52 pm

I'm pretty sure there aren't many rock climbers who throw a rope up to the top of whatever it is they're climbing and walk up the face of it. That's definitely a descending shot, and I think the copy desk did as best they could with it. It's a bad premise to begin with.

Phillip Blanchard · **Posted:** Thu Jul 15, 2004 5:57 pm

<blockquote>quote:<hr>Originally posted by Niko Dugan:
That's definitely a descending shot, and I think the copy desk did as best they could with it. It's a bad premise to begin with.<hr></blockquote>If that guy is coming down and the caption says he's climbing (I don't understand why anyone would go up or down a rock face), then the copy desk didn't do the best it could. You really have to look at these pictures carefully, and, often, question the photographer and, sometimes, the subject, to understand what's going on.
I would have suggested that whoever was laying out the page find a "news" photo to take its place.

jjmoney62 · **Posted:** Thu Jul 15, 2004 7:36 pm

In a general sense, the person is out rock climbing.Last call. Anyone want to take a crack at an overline? It needs one, whether we like it or not. Deadline approaches and we've got more important stories to worry about.Otherwise, I'm going to go with that one.[ July 15, 2004: Message edited by: jjmoney62 ]

12thfret · **Posted:** Thu Jul 15, 2004 7:52 pm

Sun 'n' fun?

SeaRaven · **Posted:** Thu Jul 15, 2004 7:58 pm

Demanding a rewrite of the overline is a false alternative, my friend. The concept of the package is fundamentally flawed. The photo does not illustrate unusually hot weather.

Phillip Blanchard · **Posted:** Thu Jul 15, 2004 8:05 pm

Calling the photo and layout desks on this kind of stuff is one of those little things we have to do to fulfill our responsibility to keep stupid stuff out of the paper. I would rather take the time to get something killed than write a stupid overline on an inappropriate picture.

Peter Sibley · **Posted:** Thu Jul 15, 2004 9:46 pm

"Warm, on the face of it"

SeaRaven · **Posted:** Fri Jul 16, 2004 4:36 am

Fahrenheit scaleMaking the most of Tuesdayâ€™s high temperatures, a rock-climbing enthusiast, left, who was out rock-climbing, gestures while descending a rock face, which he had previously ascended in a fashion strikingly reminiscent of how mercury rises in a thermometer, as the sun, above, looks on. It was really hot yesterday, but not as hot as itâ€™s been in the past. Itâ€™ll be hot again today. Then again, this IS the middle of July. Details, Page 2B.

jjmoney62 · **Posted:** Fri Jul 16, 2004 8:45 am

I knew you could do it, Sea.

Oeditpus Rex · **Posted:** Fri Jul 16, 2004 1:53 pm

<blockquote>quote:<hr>Originally posted by SeaRaven:
Details, Page 2B.<hr></blockquote>Should "page" be up? :::snarky grin:::Well-played, Sea. Had me laughin' out loud.Vaguely related, when I was a do-it-all sports guy I once got a photo at a high-school girls soccer game of a line of legs caked with mud from the rain-soaked pitch. I half-heartedly offered it to the EIC as weather art, and he ran it the next day as an A1 standalone... with the overline "Oh so fun."

ramblerdan · **Posted:** Mon Jul 19, 2004 2:40 pm

>a photo at a high-school girls soccer game of a line of legs caked with mud from the rain-soaked pitch ... with the overline "Oh so fun."I don't get it.

Le Petomane · **Posted:** Sun Jul 25, 2004 4:47 am

<blockquote>quote:<hr>Originally posted by Oeditpus Rex:
Apparently there were no available children playing in sprinklers.<hr></blockquote>Oedipus, nice to see that I have an ally in the neverending battle against the kids-in-sprinklers photos beloved by lazy photographers everywhere.

EditThis · **Posted:** Sun Jul 25, 2004 7:30 pm

<blockquote>quote:<hr>Originally posted by Le Petomane:
[b]Oedipus, nice to see that I have an ally in the neverending battle against the kids-in-sprinklers photos beloved by lazy photographers everywhere.[/b]<hr></blockquote>
Lazy photogs -- and those dispatched at 4 p.m. to "find some centerpiecable feature art and get back here quick" because the editors' meeting has revealed there ain't jack shit for the next day's front page.Another reason to love the South -- it's still hot enough at 4 p.m. to find kids in sprinklers.

redpenman · **Joined:** Fri Jul 23, 2004 12:01 am **Posts:** 65

Ah, the "Post-4 p.m. 1A punch wild goose chase."
Making copy editors cringe since 1908.

Testy Copy Editors

Oh, I get it! Hah!

Who is online

What They're Saying

Useful Links