Reading the Charlotte Sun Newspaper

Those cute kids in the hed shop last night wrote for the giggle instead of the facts — again. This morning’s three-column headline on the Florida Page, “Naked man says cops broke in without warrant,” proves silly still rules at the playpen copy desk.

The headline kid takes a temporary condition – sleeping in the nude – to characterize a general state of being. In fact, the person in question was awakened in his home – where there’s no law against nakedness – in a case of mistaken identity. By the time the victim filed a complaint against Collier County’s finest, he had found his jeans.

The story says the victim believes he was targeted for a warrantless search based on an anonymous Crime Stopper’s tip because he wears dreads, caps and tats. “I like my dreads. I like my gold teeth. I like my tattoos on my arms,” he’s quoted as saying. Those are his permanent conditions. Less of a snicker and far more accurate: “Tattooed man says cops broke in without warrant.”

But a Sun copy desk kid (can’t bring myself to say “copy editor”) has an ongoing, adolescent fascination with all things nekkid.

Clearly, the stadium wasn’t running fast enough.

That’s the print edition. Here’s the e-edition.

Millions missing in embezzlement mystery

The story says $1.6 million and change is gone. That’s a singular million, not a plural millions.

Worse, the story carries no report of embezzlement. A bookkeeper is named by a principal in the story, and her Facebook page is discussed at length. However, no charges had been filed against her, and why and how the money disappeared remained a mystery. Old Word Wolf doesn’t know how a copy desk editor can predict embezzlement, but she smells a potential libel suit should the story unfold along other lines.