Headlines, a.m. class
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Editing Matters 
“Berryville driver regains position after wreck.” This headline was from the “Harrison Daily Times.” It struck me before I read it because of the key words it included, “driver resigns” and “after wreck.” It lets me know that the driver of the vehicle (in this case a school bus, which I know because of the prominent accompanying photo) chose to leave his position, and that came after an accident. Because I can see the school bus so prominently with the headline, I am really interested to find out if any children were hurt in the crash or what other reason would lead the driver to resign. The headline was clear that the driver chose to leave after an incident; it seemed to be fair and not slanted in any way. This headline was also very specific, indentifying the location.
The next headline I found to be engaging was from “The Denver Post.” The first thing I saw was a big type font that read, “Teen girls.” Then, I saw above it “Fastest-growing segment of the criminal population?” Although I read this out of order, I found it effective because I saw “Teen girls” so prominently and then went to the closest thing around it to give me more information. It was very specific as to what part of the population it is about. It is also interesting. Teen girls aren’t likely to be a big factor in crime, so I want to read the story to find out if that is true, how they know and why it is happening. The article focused on teen girls provoked to inflict violence because of taunting by other teen girls and a program designed to help the girls. This headline could be clearer by putting more emphasis on the top portion of the headline that explained the story, but because I was immediately drawn in I didn’t really notice it being vague.
The main story from Thursday’s issue of USA Today was titled “Winner takes all?” I’m sure the headline “Winner takes all” has been used countless times in the coverage of political races, but this headline was different because of the question mark. It made me wonder if it really is a winner takes all election. The story was about the Nevada Senate race between Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and his Republican challenger, Sharron Angle. Many Nevadan voters are voting against the candidate they don’t like, rather than voting for a candidate they do like. One voter even said people are voting for “the lesser of two evils.” I like the headline because it is an interesting way of introducing the story since neither candidate is an ideal choice for many voters.
“The oldest thing we’ve ever seen” is the other headline I liked from USA Today. This story is about a Hubble Space Telescope photo that shows a “small smudge of light” that European astronomers calculate is a galaxy from 13.1 billion years ago. It is said to be the most distant and oldest galaxy ever seen. The headline easily could have read “The oldest galaxy ever found,” or something that stated the obvious. Instead, they made it basic, yet clever, to lure readers in, and I think it works very well.
The first headline that caught my attention was “Harry’s Problems: Voters Don’t Know He Saved the World.” The story is about Senate Majority Leader, Harry Reid. Reid’s popularity has plummeted within the past weeks and Reid said it is because the people of Nevada do not know ‘but for [him] we’d be in a worldwide depression.’ Although the article we read said to avoid loaded words, depending on your audience, readers may enjoy the sarcasm. This story was on the Fox News homepage. I think most of the audience members would enjoy the poke at Reid. I thought the headline was clear and accurate. It used a quote from Reid which accurately summed up the story.
The second headline that caught my attention was “Runaway Crocodile Blamed for Plane Crash.” The article explained a British plane crashed because the reptile escaped from his bag causing a panic among the passengers. The passengers stampeded to one side of the plane causiing it to tip off balance and crash. I like this headline because the idea of it was so out there, yet it is an accurate description of what happened. The journalist didn’t even need to try and be clever the story is funny in itself.
After reading about the importance of writing a good headline I went online and looked at the Omaha World-Herald and The New York Times websites. One headline that caught my attention at the Omaha World-Herald’s website was “Search for remains is ceaseless.” The story is about people who lost their loved ones in wars such as World War II, Vietnam, Korea and others and the soldiers’ bodies have never been recovered. The Defense Department is conducting a search for bodies that have yet to be found with the help of family members and loved ones by using DNA to help identify the remains. The reason I like the headline is because it was interesting. Immediately it caught my attention and I wanted to know what the story was talking about. I didn’t know if it was about a murder that happened locally or if there are hidden remains somewhere in the country. I was pleasantly surprised when I read the story and I thought the headline was a good fit for it. It is actually clear to me that the headline is telling me exactly what the story is about, without giving too much information away.
The second headline I choose from The New York Times is “Should You Watch Football?” The story is about football fans and if the game is a sport or more of a violent spectacle that fans can’t seem to take their eyes of off. The players of football injure themselves game after game and yet that is what draws fans in to the sport. The story is questioning if football is changing and becoming more violent and if fans are supporting this change. The headline was intriguing because it is very specific and yet interesting. Using a question as a tactic to draw a reader in is usually a good idea, and in this instance it works well. It made me answer the question with “why wouldn’t I watch football.” Because I answered the headline this way, I wanted to actually read the story.
The first headline I found, was “Even after a car accident, actress delivers a smashing performance.” This was an article about an old from the late 1800 to early 1900s. She was one of the first celebrities to get into a crash, and that same night she arrived only 10 minutes late to perform on stage. Later on in life she ended losing her leg due to gangrene. I’m not really sure why it was on the LA Times site, but I did like the headline because the “smashing” performance was playing off of the car accident.
The second headline I chose was “Michigan proposal may land parents in jail for missing teacher conferences.” This was a straight forward headline, which I appreciated because I like to know what I’m about to read. It was also nice because the story itself is so interesting that it didn’t need to be played up. Michigan really is proposing to send parents to jail for three days if they don’t attend one conference a year if you’re a parent of poor students. However, this proposal is receiving mixed reviews on how reasonable and successful it might be.
I found two headlines on The Huffington Post that were interesting enough to catch my eye, and clear enough to give me a solid idea of the content of each.
The first headline was “Georgetown Drug Lab Found In Harbin Dorm.” The rest of the story merely elaborated on the headline, stating that a freshman dormitory had been evacuated after a suspected meth lab was found in one of the rooms. Though no one had been seriously injured, several students had been exposed to noxious chemicals, and an investigation is still ongoing. I liked the headline because it was very specific and generated interest without pushing a bias or dramatizing the event. After living in a dormitory and witnessing the level of security, I wanted to find out how this could have happened at a college as prestigious as Georgetown University.
The second headline “Realco guns tied to 2,500 crimes in D.C. and Maryland” was published by the Washington Post. The article was about an in-depth investigation done by the Post, which traced the guns used in an incredible amount of documented crimes back to one store. It jumped between narrative details about the crime to factual explanations of how weapons stores operate within perimeters of the law to willingly allow such power into the hands of violent individuals. The headline was effective through the juxtaposition of numbers: so many crimes from a single source. I had been astounded and simply had to continue reading.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/10/23/georgetown-dorm-meth-lab_n_772829.html
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/10/23/AR2010102302994.html
The two headlines I found may not have been ingeniously written, but they certainly capture the reader’s attention. It’s the story’s oddity that draws in the reader and makes it easy to place an eye-catching headline, which is why I chose them. I pulled both stories from the San Jose Mercury News’ website. The first headline reads, “Woman brings fake $10,000 bill to Massachusetts bank.” The headline is pretty direct to the plot of the story and not very creative, but it still catches your eye because many (including me) don’t even know a $10,000 bill exists and it makes you wonder why she forged that big of a bill instead of a smaller, more common one. The article explains that there are only about 300 of these bills still in existence and most of them are in the hands of collectors. Knowing this, the bank staff quickly suspected and soon determined the bill was a fake.
The second headline that caught my attention (be careful – it’s not exactly PG) read, “Police: Naked man found in business watching porn.” Okay first off, why was he doing this, and even more so, why was he completely naked?? The headline is smart in starting it with “Police” so that it doesn’t look like this news was according to solely the newspaper. This was another direct information headline, but also was able to easily grab reader’s attention due to the nature of its story. The event happened in Oklahoma City, but the man’s name and the business isn’t revealed. What’s even more odd is that the man didn’t work there. He just came in sometime during the lunch break and sat at someone’s desk naked and began viewing pornography at what coworkers thought was his desk.
My first headline was found on the news aggregating blog http://www.drudgereport.com. The headline reads: Teleprompter to make its debut in Parliment when Obama speaks. The story is about the planned trip to India that President Obama is taking. During this trip Obama will be speaking in front of the Indian Parliment and he will be bringing along his ubiquitous speech reading aide. The story explains that it will be the first time this device will be used in the hall in which the President is speaking. The headline is effective in terms of cleverness because it anthropomorphizes a teleprompter, it’s funny. The headline is also effective because it’s negative and criticizing tone caters well to the majority Conservative readership of The Drudge Report.
My next headline comes The New York Times business section. It reads:”With Kinect, Microsoft Aims for a Game Changer.” The Kinect is Microsoft’s latest addition to their video game system, the Xbox 360. The device allows for contollerless motion play and is hoped by Microsoft to be a revolutionary device in gamepplay as well as in overall computer use. The headline of the article is effictive because it is clever in that it leaves a sliver of mystery as to what exactly the Kinect is. I think the Times takes a leap of faith when it trusts its readership to be clever enough to piece together the words “Game” and “Microsoft” to equal Xbox 360. A story with the word Microsoft is usually enough the pique the interest of many readers just because of how big a name it is. So, the Times didn’t need to spell too much out in its headline to grab the reader’s attention and so, I think it is effective as a headline.
I was browsing the “Omaha World-Herald” website and a headline that caught my eye was, “Korver is feeling confident again.” The reason it caught my eye is because I like sports and being from Omaha that name is familiar to me. If I were from anywhere else I wouldn’t really know the name. But because I knew the name I thought it was an article about Kyle Korver who is in the NBA. When I clicked on the link, it turned out it was actually about Kaleb Korver. Kaleb is Kyle’s younger brother who now plays at Creighton. I wasn’t as interested in the headline after I saw that. Headlines can trick people when they are thinking of someone else. I suppose I should’ve thought of the one currently at Creighton but I thought of the more famous Korver. I think they intended to do that to draw people in so that they would read a story about the younger Korver.
The next website I went to was “USAToday.” The first headline I saw caught my eye. It said, “Research teams find oil on bottom of Gulf.” Since it was worded that way, that they found oil on the bottom, it really drew my attention. Especially with the oil spill recently happening. Otherwise I would not have cared about that at all. Seeing that headline it made me think there was a problem with the oil in the Gulf again. Although it is good news that they found out there is oil there, it is also bad news to know that it will be even more of a struggle to clean up all the oil.
For this assignment I visited CNN.com. Among the list of about 20 headlines listed in a box labeled “Latest News”, these two immediately caught my attention.
The first was “Forever unhappy meal”. The novelty of the subject matter and the play on words initially drew me to click on it. The story is about a New York City photographer who took pictures of a McDonald’s Happy Meal every few days for six months. The alarming part about this is that the pictures showed little to no changes in the appearance of the hamburger and fries. The story went on to get the statements from food scientists and McDonalds reps. After reading the story, I really like this clever headline even more.
The second headline that caught my eye was “Band jams on iPhone ‘instruments’”. Like the first, I was drawn in by the novelty. Also the fact that instruments is in quotes makes me curious as to why these instruments are ‘instruments’. This video details the story about the band behind a currently popular YouTube video. It has recently gained more than 1.3 million views. The band, Atomic Tom, plays a show on a subway using only iPhone apps hooked up to amplifiers. I quickly understood why the word instruments was in quotations and thought this headline was also very clever and effective.
The first headline that caught my attention was from The New York Times. The headline reads: “In Hawaii, Birds’ Friday Night Flights Turn Out the Lights on Prep Games.” The story is about young seabirds that mistake the stadium lights at high school football games in Hawaii for the moon and stars. The lights cause the birds to become disoriented and eventually tire out and fall the the ground. After falling the birds are often eaten by cats or hit by cars.
This story is interesting because it’s pretty unusual, especially to someone (like me) his isn’t from Hawaii and had no knowledge of this sort of thing. The headline also flowed well when read because the words night, flights and lights all rhymed.
The second headline that interested me was from the Omaha World Herald. The headline reads: “Call center taps a resource.” The story is about a call center in Columbus that employs a large amount of disabled people who aren’t able to work in labor intensive jobs because of their disabilities.
I think the headline was doing a play on words by using the word “tap” in relation to a call center where many may think of tapping into someone’s phone line. The headline could be better though. The word “resources” is vague, but still it got me to read the article.