Cultural references and coverlines

Cultural references are funny things. The subs wanted to use 'Shock and Awe' for a coverline on a story about electric vehicles, but the editor didn't get the reference.

On a different occasion the editor suggested 'Muddy Mavis!' for a coverline on a test of a 4x4 pickup, but the subs didn't get the reference.

Of course, the 'Muddy Mavis!' coverline got used and the 'Shock and Awe' one didn't. I suppose that's one advantage of being the editor.


(For those who don't know, a coverline in this context is a sentence or phrase on a magazine's cover, usually flagging up one of the stories inside that issue. There's a good glossary of journalism terms on Journalism.co.uk.)

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Shock and Awe was a phrase used by the US government to describe the swiftness of their attack on Iraq, wasn't it? I thought that was pretty well-known.

I haven't got a clue what on earth Muddy Mavis might refer to, though.

JD (The Engine Room) said...

Neither do I, but then we probably don't have much in common with the magazine's 'average reader'...