The Daily Breeze’s headline Monday marking “12 Years a Slave” ‘s Best Picture win was “tacky, ridiculous, stupid,” Michael Anastasi said in a phone call. Anastasi is the vice president of news and executive editor for Digital First Media’s Los Angeles News Group, which publishes The (Torrance, Calif.) Daily Breeze.
The headline reads: “‘Slave’ becomes master.” (“How does this actually get published?” Slade Sohmer writes.)
Anastasi said “I winced” when he saw the front, and that his “body is still contorted” from his physical reaction to the headline. He’s spoken to the Breeze’s editors, he said. “They feel terrible and have taken responsibility,” he said. “It should never have happened.” There will be internal discipline, Anastasi said, declining to elaborate. He says the people at the Breeze “work very hard day in and day out to do some terrific journalism.”
Not many people called to complain, he said, about four or five readers. “One is bothersome to me,” he said.
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