Ultimate Insider Term is Kentucky Post’s Last Headline
Nobody - nobody - uses the term that was the last headline for the last issue of the Kentucky Post.
Even in their death, the editor that wrote the headline succumbed to a out-of-date and meaningless cliche: -30-
The front-page headline in the last Kentucky Post proclaimed “-30-,” a symbol used by journalists, printers, and telegraphers to signal the end of a dispatch.
It’s absurd that -30- be the final headline.
This is my one last swing at a dead horse with a buggy whip while checking the ticker for the morning’s flashes. I’ll hunch over the old Remington and see if I can get this posted on the Internets.
-30-
January 3rd, 2008 at 8:18 am
How about a youtube video of a someone singing “Bloggers killed the newspaper star?”
January 3rd, 2008 at 10:43 am
@David: Heh. Not bad. Backed up by “The Quarterly Profit Short Termers”
January 14th, 2008 at 3:23 pm
Mark,
On the contrary, -30- was a highly appropriate sign-off at the death of an historic and gritty afternoon newspaper.
In addition, headlines are designed to attract readers to the story. Unitiated readers of this story undoubtedly would have found the -30- headline curious and thus would have been more likely to read the obit.
For interested readers of your blog, there is a fascinating story about the rich history of the 30-dash in the October/November issue of the American Journalism Review — http://www.ajr.org/Article.asp?id=4408
January 14th, 2008 at 3:37 pm
@Ed: thanks for writing. We disagree. The link you provided is very interesting thanks.