10 Headline Bloopers That Probably Got Someone Fired

One of the most important skills a copy editor can have is a dirty, skeptical mind. If you can spot sexual innuendo from a mile away and pick up on unintended racial slurs, you might have a future in headline writing and proofreading. The people at these newspapers and websites clearly didn't possess that necessary ability and let these terrible (and sometimes terribly awesome) headlines slip through the cracks. These headline mistakes probably got someone in trouble, but at least we can all learn from or at least laugh at them.

1. Chink in the Armor

   This headline about Knicks star Jeremy Lin was almost as big of a story as Lin's rise to fame. Anthony Federico, an ESPN editor at the time, wrote and posted the now-infamous headline at 2:30 a.m. before heading out for the night. It was taken down from the site within 35 minutes because of its inappropriate use of the Chinese racial slur, chink. Federico, who had been at ESPN since 2006, was fired the day after the incident. He has apologized, saying that it was just a mistake and he hadn't considered the connotation of the word that appears in the common phrase.
   

2. Gook double earns victory

   You might think that the Lin headline fiasco would make ESPN.com editors hyper-sensitive to any ethnic slurs, especially against Asians. Apparently that wasn't the case, because just a week after the Lin debacle, the headline "Gook double earns victory" appeared on the soccer home page. The soccer player the title refers to is Lee Dong-Gook, a member of the South Korea national team. Considering Dong-Gook is his first name, in the style of many Asian countries, and that even if the headline writer didn't understand that, he should've written Dong-Gook rather than just Gook, this mistake is as offensive as the Lin blooper. Gook is a well-known derogatory term for Koreans and East Asians. The headline has since been changed to "Lee double earns victory."
   

3. Reader fingers murder suspect

   Commuters in D.C. were treated to a weird mental image when they picked up their free copy of The Examiner in early December 2011. On first read, it sounds like a reader and a killer were having a romantic tryst, which definitely should not make front-page news. The real meaning is more significant, with a reader helping police get a new lead in a cold case — more newsworthy, but not nearly as scandalous a headline. Those copy editors probably felt a little sheepish after they realized the meaning they had conveyed. Can we all just agree that "fingers" is no longer an appropriate verb to use for anything that you want to be taken seriously?
   

4. Tired Gay succumbs to Dix in 200 meters

   You can hardly blame the copy editor for going with this headline. When you get a chance like this to make a perfectly innocent, informative title so dirty, you take it. The story refers to runners Walter Dix and Tyson Gay and the outcome of a race. They just happen to have unfortunate last names to be put together. If Reuters got any complaints about this one, I'm sure they just told the reader to get his mind out of the gutter and then giggled when they got off the phone.
   

5. French B.O. up 9%

   The French are getting stinkier? Is that even possible? Most people associate the abbreviation B.O. with body odor, though it apparently stands for box office in some circles. It's unclear exactly why it needed to be shortened since it's on the Internet and there is plenty of space, so we can only assume that some headline writer had a personal beef (or maybe boeuf) with the French.
   
   
   
   
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