Making Headlines

Today, as I do everyday, I got to work, fired up my computer and hopped onto my email to find out all those things I missed in the fifteen and a half hours I was away from my work desk. While waiting for my work email to load, I quickly hopped onto MSN to check my personal email. Every day I get an email from this website that charts how long I have quit smoking, how many cigarettes I have NOT smoked since I quit, and how much money I've saved. I find this to be a great way to start another day of not smoking.

But, I digress.

So the MSN homepage comes up and there, under the section "MSNBC News" is the headline, "Rescued teen relieved after rescue".

First, I thought "Duh". Then, I read it a few times to make sure my brain wasn't processing anything incorrectly. Then I laughed for a while. I am glad the boy is home, I'm glad he got rescued, and I'm sure he is relieved but that has to be one of the stupidest headlines I have ever read.

I come across this type of hack headline writing frequently, too. It's not really a now and then thing anymore. I love these kinds of headllines, because they make me laugh.

Headlines can be stupid in many fashions. They can state the obvious, such as the one above did in spades. Sometimes they sound dirty, even though you know what they are talking about and you know it's not dirty. For example, all this talk about gas prices over the last handful of years has created extensive use of the word "pump", which can easily be made lascivious. Some make it seem like, in the time pinch to make a deadline, no one read the headline to see if it was fit to print. Most fun is what they make me think of when I read them.

Here are a few others from sifting through today's papers that made me pause, followed by my first reaction.

"Doctors propose uterus transplants" - Ummm....
"No sprinklers at fire"- Isn't that why there was a fire in the first place?
"Hangings spark anger"- Hangings have been known to do that.
"Many across nation help, march, reflect" - Shiny happy people! Safe for jogging at night.
"Lockheed gets Navy warning shot" -Taking one for the team! Immediate second though being: It's about time someone started shooting at those bastards at Lockheed.


My favorite headline is one that I'm pretty sure no one read until the paper was on the news stand. That had to be the case, or else it never woud have been printed. In 1998, the San Jose Mercury News proclaimed, on the front page, "CIA Clears Itself in Crack Probe". I have never laughed so hard in my life. It took me a few minutes before I could calm down enough to explain to my roommate why I was laughing in the first place. When I showed her, she laughed until she was on the verge of peeing in the driver seat of her car. I still have that little gem of a headline stored away, waiting to be framed and put on display in my bathroom.

I know, headlines are for grabbing attention. They have to explain the crux of the story in a few short words. I'm sure it can get tricky, but it seems that some are almost an afterthought, or worse they can seem like they explain everything so you don't have to bother reading the whole story. Regardless of intention, I will be endlessly entertained every day as I sift through the papers and laugh thinking about the clean crack of the CIA.