This morning I got up, looked forward to a productive day of freelance work, when I came across this story about the U.S. women’s soccer team in my newspaper and almost choked on my Cheerios:

First thought: Wait… whaaaaat… Did I just see that? Is that… um… WHAAAT?

Second thought: No.. I must be overreacting. There’s a logical explanation for this.

I looked up the word at Merriam-Webster, then at Urban Dictionary, (generally NSFW), just to be sure I wasn’t misunderstanding. Oh no, I wasn’t misunderstanding.

I couldn’t possibly be overreacting. This is serious, like employee-discipline serious, right? I posted my shock to Twitter and got these responses:

	boml @suzanneyada Wow, that is bad. And not an isolated case http://tinyurl.com/6rs8kt
	byline25 @suzanneyada That headline is tasteless. It is seriously one of the most offensive headlines I’ve ever seen in my life.
	MaryTrigiani @suzanneyada Where is Visalia? Don’t blame you for being irate.
	pickoffwhite @suzanneyada I find it pretty offensive. Especially as someone who plays/loves soccer.
	mikeoz @suzanneyada eeek. yeah, that’s not good. woobie @suzanneyada Yeah, that does seem to cross a line — would the run the same headline for the men’s team?

Boml‘s link lead to a blog post about another paper in Australia who wrote a similar headline:

The debate with this one, though, is that “digger” has a different connotation down under. But even so, the caption on the news website has since been changed anyway.

So what excuse does that give a Californian paper? None.

I called up the senior editor, whom I respected when I worked there. He’s one of those old-time journalists, the kind who knows the news industry inside and out, has a million stories to tell, loves whisky and wears suspenders.

And he just… didn’t… quite… see… the problem… of that headline. And I had a hell of a time convincing him.

The first problem was that he told me I was the first person who called in to complain about the headline. I don’t believe that for one second. I called him at 11 am, well after the issue hit the streets. And this at a paper whose phone lines were flooded with calls once because someone put the word “freaking” in a headline. As in, “freaking cool.” Yeah.

So I had to explain to him the meaning of the term “gold digger” and that it’s a derogatory term for women who date richer men just for their money. He said he understood it could be taken offensively and tried to explain it was not meant to be taken in that context. I told him there was no other context to take — the headline would have never been used for the men’s soccer team. He tried to say it was for effect, that if they wrote the headline “Women’s Soccer Wins 3-2″ it wouldn’t have made as much of an impact. By then, I truly believe he forgot he was on the phone with me, someone that’s written headlines for them for three years. I know why they write headlines that aren’t straight-forward, I know how much labor it takes to making one headline as accurate as possible in the space allotted. This one seemed to be a filler headline the sports desk put in until they thought of a better one — and they never did change it.

He seemed sympathetic but wanted to stand his ground in the headline’s defense. I don’t think I made my message clear enough until I told him that there’s a strip joint in Bakersfield [my bad: Fresno] called Gold Diggers. That seemed to shut him up a bit.

I wonder if I spoke to the executive editor — a woman — I would have had a different reaction.

I just… I just can’t believe for a second I’m the only one in Visalia who called in. I’m outraged because a) this is MY paper, that I love and respect, b) I know the people behind it, and c) THEY KNOW BETTER!

…Or do they?

EDIT TO ADD: I’ve called a couple other editors and confirmed that yes, there pretty much was only one person who called in to complain. I don’t consider myself (or those who responded to my Twitter) a femi-Nazi-type. Am I off? Or is the town?

I was also told that the editor who wrote it truly didn’t realize how offensive it would be and meant no harm. I am just… confused. Really confused. Sometimes I wonder if I’m the one living in an alternate reality.