Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments

SoylentNews is people

posted by martyb on Tuesday February 12 2019, @07:00PM   Printer-friendly
from the gotta-hand-it-to-'em dept.

Submitted via IRC for TheMightyBuzzard

In the tabloid tradition, a good headline must do three things: it must communicate the news; it must commit some act of wordplay; and it must trigger a certain popping of the eyes in its reader, ideally accompanied by some kind of involuntary subverbal response—a squawk, a snort, a guffaw, a gasp. On Thursday, just minutes after Jeff Bezos revealed that American Media, Inc., had threatened to publish explicit photographs of him unless he acquiesced to certain demands, tabloid-headline excellence was achieved, when HuffPost declared, on its home page, "Bezos Exposes Pecker." "Pecker," of course, referred to David Pecker, the chairman and C.E.O. of A.M.I.—the same Pecker who, during the 2016 Presidential election, facilitated a payment to a woman who had a story to tell about an affair with Donald Trump.

[...] The headline was the work of Hayley Miller, a HuffPost reporter in New York whose workday had already ended when the Bezos news came out. [...] The idea for "Bezos Exposes Pecker" came to her quickly, but she hesitated before sharing it. On one hand, she said, "I was just, like, Oh, my gosh, this is gold—got to do this." On the other hand, she considered, "Do I want to bother my colleagues with another dick pun?" In the end, she went for it. "Trusted my gut, I guess," she said.

Whitney Snyder, a HuffPost deputy editor [...] explained that this wasn't the first time the Web site's Slack channels had been peppered with Pecker puns. "We did have a bit of a rehearsal in August," he said, referring to the day that Pecker's immunity deal with federal prosecutors was reported. "We ran a headline that was 'Report: Trump Loses Pecker.' "

Source: https://www.newyorker.com/news/current/the-story-behind-the-instant-classic-bezos-exposes-pecker-headline

Previously: Jeff Bezos Accuses National Enquirer of Blackmail


Original Submission

 
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
Display Options Threshold/Breakthrough Mark All as Read Mark All as Unread
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
  • (Score: 0, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 12 2019, @09:27PM (4 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 12 2019, @09:27PM (#800336)

    These penis jokes are a perfect example of the toxic masculinity that is driving women away from the old boy's club mainstream media outlets.

    The patriarchy must be torn down so women can have a safe space in the media that is free from this triggering bro culture.

    Starting Score:    0  points
    Moderation   0  
       Troll=2, Interesting=1, Funny=1, Total=4
    Extra 'Troll' Modifier   0  

    Total Score:   0  
  • (Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 12 2019, @10:20PM (2 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 12 2019, @10:20PM (#800366)

    Did you somehow miss the parts where first off, this is huffpoo, the vanguard of modern militant radical feminism and secondly the creator of said headline is of the XX flavor of humanity rather than XY?

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 12 2019, @11:27PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 12 2019, @11:27PM (#800389)

      The Anon you reply to is a male who is doing his damn best to make a joke using mimicry.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 13 2019, @07:02AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 13 2019, @07:02AM (#800523)

      >> implying serious OP [wikipedia.org]

      Come on... Only someone with severe brain damage or mental retardation would unironically spout the same kind of arguments as the ones in the OP.

  • (Score: 3, Touché) by c0lo on Wednesday February 13 2019, @12:33AM

    by c0lo (156) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday February 13 2019, @12:33AM (#800404) Journal

    Oh, don't be such a pussy.

    --
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford