Remember this …

Caleb Sommerville, who worked at the Kansan, wrote a comment on the blog …

I worked at the Kansan as a reporter when this article (and horrifying picture) ran. Jessica Wicks is a friend of mine, and I remember very well this front page.

Let me outline what happened.

The editors wanted a story about guns and campus after the other campus shooting in Illinois. Jessica Wicks was assigned it, and wrote a fair article.

The way the Kansan (and most newspapers) run is that the reporter turns the story in to the system, where it sits until designers plug it into a layout program like InDesign. If art needs to run with it, designers insert it accordingly. Sometimes it’s photos taken by the photo staff, sometimes it’s clipart, sometimes it’s graphics.

Since this was a time-sensitive and highly timely article, they decided to run it front page, above the fold, with some eye-catching art.

Here’s where we get dicey. The horrible pictures are a DESIGNER’s fault (who was yelled at the day this ran; I witnessed it), who went against the editor’s and the reporter’s wish and created this monstrosity.

The editors were pissed because of the hilariously bad graphic with such a serious story, the reporter was pissed that her story now looked like crap, and people who knew about guns were pissed that some idiot designer pissed all over the front page with his bad photoshop skillz.
Believe me, this was on the Wall of Shame for a long time.

Speaking of bad photoshops …

For a movie that cost just $80 million to make, it is probably too much to ask for them to photograph guns from both sides rather than just mirror them in the movie poster.

[ Many thanks to Zak for the movie poster pic. ]