In April of 1974, with Congress and the Watergate special prosecutor demanding access to the secret tape recordings of President Nixon's Oval Office conversations, Nixon instead released edited transcripts of the tapes (leaving out, as you might expect, the good stuff). The pressure mounted, but Nixon wouldn't budge and on May 8, 1974, after the Pres. had refused once again to change his position, the Indianapolis Star captured the standoff with the headline:

"Nixon To Stand Pat on Watergate Tapes"

Tonight Show fans are aware that Jay Leno has made a recurring gag out of holding up actual, unintentionally hilarious, headlines, in which a typo or just a word (like "Pat," in the case above, which was way before Leno's time) that is susceptible to multiple meanings creates double entendres.

But Leno is a piker and a newcomer to the game compared to the estimable Columbia Journalism Review. The mostly very serious, highly respected bimonthly CJR has reproduced 10 or 12 unfortunate headlines, picture captions or other bits of copy on the inside back cover of every bimonthly issue for about half a century. The featured is called "The Lower Case." I suppose it's one more thing we'll miss when the newspapers go away, because the most common source of such accidents derives from the peculiar grammar and uncompromising space limitations of the headline-writer's craft. Online journalism can surely embarrass itself, but the pressure to make a headline fit a particular "head order," as we called them in the trade, doesn't create the same pressure online.

CJR has published two anthologies of the best of the worst of such flubs. They are titled:

"Squad Helps Dog Bite Victim" and "Red Tape Holds Up New Bridge"

As you guessed, those last two are both actual headlines, too, contained with the paperback books so titled. The headlines and other journo-screw-ups are totally bona fide, and the magazine insists on running photocopies of what was actually published. I've had the anthologies on my coffee table for years. Today, as a twisted homage to copy editors and headline writers, I've dragged them out to share a few of my favorites, just from Volume 1, Squad Helps Dog Bite Victim:

"New Missouri U. Chancellor Expects Little Sex"

"Milk Drinkers Turn to Powder"

"City May Impose Mandatory Time For Prostitution"

"Stiff opposition expected to casketless funeral plan"

"Shouting Match Ends Teacher's hearing"

(From The Minneapolis Tribune, 1967:) "Deer Kill 130,000"

"Teen-age prostitution problem is mounting"

"Carcinogens Cause Cancer, Says Book"

"Few have entered Miss Carmichael" (In case you need a little help with that one, it was the Miss Carmichael beauty pageant in Carmichael, Calif.)

"Sneak Attack by Soviet Bloc Not Foreseen"

"Ford, Reagan Neck in Presidential Primary"

"Dead Expected To Rise"

"Caribbean islands drift to left"

"Child's Stool Great For Use in Garden"

And, the tautological, perpetually true but depressing from the Wisconsin State Journal in December 1965:

WAR DIMS HOPES FOR PEACE

(It does, y'know.)

CJR still has "The Lower Case," in every issue. I've subscribed for decades. I won't claim to have read every article ever published. But when a new issue hits my desk, I immediately turn to the inside back cover.  If you're not sick of these yet (I confess, I never tire of them), the current March/April '09 issue "Lower Case" includes:

"Community rallies to help massacre survivors"

"Student charged for nude photos,"

"Lawmaker questions prison costs of killing suspect"

and "Ruutu suspended two games for biting Peters"

("The Lower Case" has had a little too much fun over the years with people named Peters. In the case above, a hockey player named Jarkko Ruutu bit an opponent named Andrew Peters -- on the finger.)

As best I can google, CJR doesn't make it too easy to look up the archives of "The Lower Case" online. But I did find this pageful from the March/April '08 issue, which includes the sad case of:

"Police: Crack Found in Man's Buttocks"

If you have any trouble ascertaining both meanings of any of the above, feel free to inquire in the thread. You wouldn't be the first to admit that you couldn't figure out what the headline writer was actually trying to say. And don't hestitate to let me know if you like these so much that I should put together a second installment of the best of "Red Tape Holds Up New Bridge."