That's what I've been SAYIN', yo!

An Extensive History Of Terrible CNN.com Headlines [Gawker]

Goodness knows I have my own large collection!

Come on, CNN!

Over the weekend, CNN had these hed busts on its homepage for more than six hours. I see this sort of thing from them all the time!

Copy editors asleep at the wheel, or no copy editors? Which would be worse ... hmm ... I can't decide.

Things that bug me about the NYT

• The excessive use of prepositional phrases at the beginning of heds:

• Awkward 'Is Dead' construction in obit heds. It's just ... harsh:

• Really egregious errors in pieces about my favorite band after The Beatles that clearly were not fact-checked. I know concert reviews are on super-tight deadlines, but c'mon, people*:

*That was for Alex.

When good specs go bad

Kids, this is what happens when waaaaay there's too much emphasis on filling out a headline for the sake of everything lining up just so:

Egads. Issue seen as key one? Blech! This smacks of "your story is too short, so I'm gonna need to put an extra dek on that hed" to me. I also don't like "seen as," because it begs the question "by whom?" and doesn't answer it.

Let's rewrite this. Ideas?