Frying the flag
There’s an amusing story called Frying the Flag in Lawrence Durrell’s Esprit de Corps, Sketches from Diplomatic Life. It’s about two elderly British ladies, Bessie and Enid Grope, who ran a newspaper called The Central Balkan Herald. They claimed in a headline that the paper "keeps the British flag frying". "A whole generation of Serbs have had their English mauled by the Herald," an English diplomat complains.
The paper was hand-set by "half-a-dozen hirsute Serbian peasants with greasy elf-locks and hands like shovels". Every morning, diplomats, ex-pats and others gnashed their teeth, sighed, groaned, cursed, but there was nothing to be done. "Mrs Schwartkopf has cast off clothes of every description and invites inspection." "Queen of Holland Gives Panty for Ex-Servicemen."
We probably don’t have hirsute Serbian peasants composing (if that’s the word) our papers. We have high-tech this and that, plenty of money, plush surroundings for editors and staff, but somehow we don’t seem to do better than Bessie and Enid Grope. And there are very few editors who will gnash their teeth, sigh, groan and curse when the paper is full of errors, clichés, and just plain junk.