Bad magazine layouts: Editing for idiots

I had a job as an editor in college. I was not paid for this job but I was using it to get experience that I had hoped woul land me a job as an actual paid editor after college. This plan did not work out for me as the print industry was in massive decline by the time I graduated and perhaps it is a good thing it didn't work out for me because these days that industry is almost completely dead.

There are many things and editor is in charge of but one of them is the overall layout and making certain that the headlines around it as well as ad placement don't end up being ridiculous. Here are some times where editors have been asleep at the wheel for magazines and newspapers.

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While the image is cropped, the sex part is referring to something that is going on above George and has nothing to do with the dog. It still shouldn't be there though.

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This is both hilarious and insensitive. As an ex editor I know that the page you pay the most to is the front one and therefore no matter the budget of this particular paper this is inexcusable. It is from 2016 so there is a good chance nobody ever saw it anyway.

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Ad placement isn't always up to the editor because certain advertisers pay a premium for preferential ad placement position, or at least that was the case many years ago. Even if this company paid to be on this particular page they should have moved the story about domestic abuse to another section. Maybe it was intentional though, I certainly hope so. People can still have a sense of humor, right?

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This happened more than once with Where Magazine so I have a hard time believing that they didn't at least to some degree, know it was happening. Maybe they didn't like the model of those months. It is pretty easy to understand that when the name of your publication is "Where" that covering the "O" can turn that into another word.

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The bottom line is that editing is a difficult job, yes; but this is why people get paid for it. I'd like to say that now that basically everything is digital that these things no longer happen but if anything they happen more frequently because publishers realize they can simply go back and do a quick edit after the fact. What makes the above (and many other) mistakes so funny to me is that by the time the figured it out the papers or magazines had already been printed and there was nothing that could be done to correct it.