All the news that's fit to critique...

I suppose that journalists read the newspapers "differently" from ordinary readers. Even among journalists, those with a sub-editing background -- like me -- are arguably more nitpicky than those with a reporting background.

There is a term we in the trade use, "post-mortem", to describe the collective critique of the printed result of the previous day's efforts (ours is a violent trade; we also "kill" stories). I won't really be doing a post-mortem below; it'll be a selective critique of some of the stuff that appeared in today's ST (as well as one item from TODAY).

My first comment is actually on the wraparound Samsung Galaxy Note II ad in today's ST (Oct 19). As I have been doing in this blog, I try to pick out good and bad ads. I like the way this Samsung ad gave an interesting spiel on the notion of creativity:

The way it is written, it passes muster as a feature story!

I am sure many people would have read in its entirety the very interesting story on "Singapore's last street barbers":

As far as is known, there are only four of them left, says the story. And even one Gen Y youth has fond memories:

But I felt something was missing from the story... a picture of the manual hair clipper of yester-year! It has gone the way of the dodo but I can still feel its cold metallic surface and the snipping sound it makes. So here it is, for old times' sake:

To me, the story "PM Lee tours water facilities in Johor" is a timely reminder that Singaporeans must never take our water supply for granted. The reporter's short but succinct write-up provided key information:

Turning to the Forum (letters) page, I was glad to see the Media Development Authority (MDA) give its side with regard to the recent controversy over a set of three local films collectively titled Sex.Violence.Family Values. If I had jumped in to comment earlier, I might likely have been critical of the MDA -- without having the full facts. Here's the letter, which explains why the MDA acted the way it did, and why there may still be hope of a reprieve for the films:

For an earlier story on this issue, here's one from insing.com:

http://news.insing.com/tabloid/ken-kwek-defends-banned-film/id-f1613f00

Next, I found this story bizarre to the point of being funny:

I mean, wouldn't you be happy if a rival business' products were deemed "not as cool" as yours? Apple, it seems, wasn't happy!

And how many readers did a double-take on this circled paragraph below in a story headlined "Cleaning fee hike to be staggered at 6 hawker centres"?...

To me, a wanton (wonton) mee stall is so Cantonese -- I was once roundly scolded by a Teochew hawker selling fishball noodles when I absentmindedly asked him if he sold wonton mee as well -- that a name like Michael Ameerali would be like a fish(ball) out of water! If I were the reporter, I would have tried to find out more.

Feeding my curiousity too is this paragraph from the write-up about the French Prime Minister's visit ("S'pore and France raise level of ties"), which has PM Lee revealing a little known fact about Raffles' landing here in 1819:

On another page, I was mulling over the quote below:

So, my question is: In this Franco-German relationship, who is the "husband" and who is the "wife"?

------------------------------------------------------

I'll switch to nitpicking mode now!

Top on my list is this sports headline:

So her name is Wolff. And she "gives women a howl"? She's no big bad Wolff but the headline writer should be fed to real wolves.

In contrast, this TODAY story below has a good headline and a good intro...

This ST headline below is ambiguous:

Is he being sought so that he can carry out an attack on the schoolgirl? On the contrary, it seems, he is being targeted by the "good guys", but the reader has to read the sub-headline to figure this out.

---------------------------------------------------

Finally, I don't know why but I have never drunk Stout. But now I have learnt something about it, and may even give it a try next time: