The Age website's front page, yesterday

Normally, I’d give this Age online sub a slap on the back and offer to buy him or her a beer. But there’s a little more to this episode of subeditorial antics.

The story was about a serial flasher who deliberately and lewdly exposed himself to dance students in Melbourne’s eastern suburbs. The Age’s actual headline was the sober, “Serial flasher targets dance schools”; while the Herald Sun opted for, “Police hunt Rowville flasher”.

But in promoting the story on The Age website, this pearler (pictured left) got added.

(In an aside, what ursine horrors might be inflicted by “claim bears”? I wonder if Centrelink sends them around to your house to intimidate you into revealing your real income, or if insurance companies use them to add kissing bear arse to the trauma of burglaries and car crashes?)

It’s a pretty awesome headline; it even squeezes two puns in. But it has caused some disquiet online. On Twitter, Lorin Clarke told us the headline had gone “Too far!”, while Gayle Howard called it in “poor taste” and “unfunny”.

And at The Supermercado Project, blogger Adam 1.0 writes: “Ladies, ever had a random gentleman flash his knob at you? Not exactly top on your list of priorities in life I’m sure. Well, The Age want you to know that sexual crimes are a good excuse for a bit of comedy. Hi - lar - ious in the office I’m sure. Maybe NOT so appropriate on a front page.”

It’s long been this hack’s hunch that the less ethical the pun, the more enjoyable the headline. Indeed, it’s possibly the knowledge of the ‘wrongness’ of the pun that makes it so amusing. Comedy is based on things that disobey social norms, and we laugh because we recognise the norms being violated and acknowledge that violation as inappropriate.

But it is disturbingly easy for subeditors to descend into a kind of journalistic psychopathy in which all stories are fair game for jaunty puns. There is little editorial empathy for the subjects of the stories or, further, audiences who might themselves empathise with the subjects of the stories.

News media are, after all, an abstraction of community life, and in the modern news production environment where many journalists work from media releases or wire copy, they can definitely feel disconnected from the subjects of their stories. Additionally, they have little time to consider the way their work might be received.

In addition, journalism is one of the few professions in which workplace culture leaks through into the public eye. Websites such as Overheard In The Newsroom and Newsroom Quotes give us a idea of the jocular culture and black humour that reign in these kind of workplaces – or, at least, that these are the things journalists want to share.

All of this still doesn’t excuse making light of serial sex pests, but perhaps it explains why some people find headlines like this funny.