2009-09-23
Original: 2009-09-23 on Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal
Transcript
Title: JOURNALISM 101: WORD CHOICE
Panel 1 (red header bar): PROBLEM: PEOPLE DON'T LIKE HARD NEWS
Image: A large tangled pile of people heaped on top of one another. Overlaid caption box: BATRUVIAN GENOCIDE CONTINUES
Panel 2 (red header bar): SOLUTION: PEOPLE LOVE LIFESTYLE STORIES
Image: The same tangled pile of people. Overlaid caption box: AMERICA LOVES TWISTER!
Votey:
Header: BAD IDEA: TAKING NYQUIL BEFORE CARTOONING
A cartoonist lies slumped, half-asleep, face down. A speech/thought scrawl above reads as drowsy gibberish: "COOOGGOMlll lllllll/// C.S.S..."
Panel 1 (red header bar): PROBLEM: PEOPLE DON'T LIKE HARD NEWS
Image: A large tangled pile of people heaped on top of one another. Overlaid caption box: BATRUVIAN GENOCIDE CONTINUES
Panel 2 (red header bar): SOLUTION: PEOPLE LOVE LIFESTYLE STORIES
Image: The same tangled pile of people. Overlaid caption box: AMERICA LOVES TWISTER!
Votey:
Header: BAD IDEA: TAKING NYQUIL BEFORE CARTOONING
A cartoonist lies slumped, half-asleep, face down. A speech/thought scrawl above reads as drowsy gibberish: "COOOGGOMlll lllllll/// C.S.S..."
Alt text
A two-panel SMBC comic titled 'Journalism 101: Word Choice.' Both panels show the exact same drawing: a chaotic heap of many people tangled and piled on top of each other. In the top panel, a red banner reads 'Problem: People don't like hard news,' and a caption over the pile says 'Batruvian genocide continues.' In the bottom panel, an identical pile of bodies, but the red banner now reads 'Solution: People love lifestyle stories,' and the caption reads 'America loves Twister!' The joke: the same grim image of bodies is reframed from a genocide report into a cheerful story about the game Twister just by changing the words. Votey (bonus panel): titled 'Bad idea: taking Nyquil before cartooning,' it shows a drowsy cartoonist slumped face-down, mumbling illegible drugged gibberish ending in 'C.S.S...'
Transcribed by Claude Opus 4.8.