Thursday 10 January 2008

Classic newspaper front pages ...


'Gotcha' remains legendary in newspaper front page history - even though very few people saw the original.

When the news came through on 3 May 1982 that an Argentinian cruiser, the General Belgrano, had been sunk by a British submarine Sun features editor Wendy Henry shouted 'Gotcha'.

Editor Kelvin Mackenzie turned it into a huge, celebratory headline but when reports filtered through that the entire crew may have died, Mackenzie changed the headline to ‘Did 1,200 Argies drown?’ for later editions.

The headline was deemed as tasteless, though others believed The Sun had captured, not created the nation’s mood.

Source: British Library The John Frost Newspaper Archive

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Interesting to know there's a name for that nightmare situation anyone trying to write anything comes across!