Chatterbox

Comments (0) Wednesday, Aug 2 1995

The copy desk for the San Francisco Examiner's Travel section must have gone on a cruise last week, judging by this moronic sentence in the Page One, July 30 story about Malta: "... [Malta] is the most populous country per capita in the world." ... Last week, Examiner headline writers took a cue from the slogan "Because a lot can happen between 9 and 5," emblazoned on the paper's delivery trucks. In the first two July 26 editions, Erin McCormick's Page One story about Jordan and Muni carried this headline: "Jordan targets Muni waste, driver abuse." By the final edition, the headline writers were making a stronger editorial point with this grabber: "Jordan picks fight with Muni drivers." ... Chatterbox's anonymous tweakings of the San Francisco Bay Guardian's self-aggrandizing policy of slugging nearly every other quote "told the Bay Guardian" has thrown Bruce B. Brugmann's knickers in a twist. In an irate letter to SF Weekly, the Guardian editor and publisher wants to know how the Weekly dares mention his publication without phoning him first. He also demands to know what the paper's ethics code is, which set off an internal debate here. Some advocated that we update the Code of Hammurabi, emphasizing its Cormac McCarthyesque qualities, but in the spirit of tradition we have settled instead on the Ten Commandments.