New reality in spelling

Really, it’s going from bad to worse. Last December, on the morning of the Lindt cafe siege in Martin Place, our esteemed newspaper, digital edition, published a photograph, headline and, in upper case under the byline, the words ‘FAKE BODY’. At first this elicited a mere eye-rolling ‘here’s a good one’ response in my household, but as the seriousness of the situation unfolded, it became a far from amusing blunder. The typo in this headline, while not quite so insensitive as the story that went online before the text was ready, is still inexcusable. The Sydney Morning Herald is the oldest continuously published newspaper in Australia, although given its numerous staff cutbacks and resultant decrease in quality of journalism—not to mention the increasing occurrence of mistakes in spelling and grammar—it must be hanging on by a thread.