Tuesday, September 19, 2006

Read all about it!

You can be famous, too

Is the New York Times refusing to run your press releases? Has the local paper stopped publishing your letters to the editor? (I know, I know. That's why so many of us have blogs now.) Well, you can stuff your scrapbook with newspaper clippings that celebrate your fame and present the news of the day your way. That's because you write it yourself.

The Newspaper Clipping Generator awaits your visit. Make up a newspaper name, type in your article, and voilà!


You shouldn't use the name of a real newspaper, of course, so I chose “Los Angeles Tribune,” the fictional paper of Ed Asner's Lou Grant. Oops! Thanks to the fold, it looks just like the Los Angeles Times.

The clipper generator does not do a very good job of fitting your text into the column space (that is, kerning and justification are terrible), so be prepared to tinker with your text a few times to get it to look okay. I took half a dozen iterations because my fake article is longer than it should be. Sort of like this post.

By the way, I did not discover the clipping generator on my own. It was brought to my attention by Elayne Riggs, who has a blog at Pen-Elayne on the Web.

3 comments:

eProf2 said...

Professor:

Unless you're teaching at Modesto Junior College or Santa Rosa Junior College, most of us made the transition to "community college" in the 1970's. Even City College, like in San Francisco, Long Beach, LA, Fresno, and San Diego, is used more often than "junior college." It drives me crazy to hear the announcers on the networks covering university sports to talk about "junior college" transfers or "jc" transfers. I'm not picking on you but I couldn't help notice that in your "Pulitzer Prize for writing" the newspaper article referred to you as teaching in an unnamed California junior college. Ouch!

Zeno said...

So, eprof2, you read the fine print! I used "junior college" because "community college" caused a formatting mess. I tried the latter first.

Frankly, though, I don't bristle when people say "junior college" or "jc" unless they are being intentionally derogatory. I do find it interesting that MJC and SRJC hang on to the old-fashioned title, but there's some history there and I respect that.

Of course, I never listen to sports news, so I've been spared the chattering guys who compulsively say "jc". I can see where that might grate.

eProf2 said...

To me, grate like fingernails on a chalk board. LOL! I was on an accreditation visit to Santa Rosa a number of years ago and no one there seemed to care one way or the other about their name including "junior college." They're just used to it, I guess. Have a great day! And, oh, congratulations on your "Pulitzer Prize!" The first of many, I hope.