Good headline writing requires developing special skills, although some people seem naturally gifted in this department. And that matters. Because most people only read the headlines when they’re looking for a story to plunge into. Check out the spectacular headlines at Variety for examples of how to lure readers into the stories themselves. I don’t have that gift and was not, in 30+ years in alternative and mainstream journalism, in a position very often to write headlines to develop much skill at it. Over the years, however, I’ve encountered a half dozen or so people who I’ve thought were especially talented.
While great headlines may only win kudos from one’s fellow journalists, most people only seem to take notice of the bad ones. Which is what I’m going to do here. In fact, one of the funner things I did numerous times with my colleagues is have a good hoot over bad headlines, even though we all knew that anybody can make such a mistake. Of course, the really worst headlines are those that distort what the story is about. But that’s a subject for another time.
These days, obviously, writing a bad headline that gets published doesn’t just mean getting chewed out in the editor’s office. It can garner you nationwide notoriety on Twitter. The worst bad headlines live forever on the Internet.
One of the worst I saw close up was during the Los Angeles Herald-Examiner’s last month of existence in 1989 when it published a front page banner headline in the weeks before the U.S. invaded Panama: Bush Threatens Pamana. It was caught and fixed after the presses had run about a fourth of the paper’s 240,000 circulation.
And then there are these:
Illiteracy an obstable, study finds (The Washington Post)
JUDGE: BRADY SUPENION MAY BE DROPPED (The Daily Beast)
But typos and spelling errors in headlines are relatively rare. Usually the problem is double-entendre or simply not thinking things through fully. Like:
Hooker named Lay Person of the Year (Dekalb News)
Statistics Show that Teen Pregnancy Drops Off Significantly After Age 25 (Denver Post)
Alcohol Ads Promote Drinking (The Hartford Courant)
Waterskiing Accident Ruled Accidental (Trenton Times)
Illinois Sends Bill Allowing Gay Marriage to Governor (The New York Times)
This year, the folks at “The Lower Case” of the Columbia Journalism Review revived an old CJR feature—publishing bad headlines sent in by readers. Those can be new or hauled out of some archive. Here’s a handful from the ongoing collection:
Police Shoot Dead Suspect Inside L.A. Emergency Room (CBS News website)
Blue Skies Unless It’s Cloudy (San Francisco Chronicle)
War Dims Hopes for Peace (Wisconsin State Journal)
Peyton Manning Treats Fan with Stage 4 Cancer (ESPN)
‘Democracy Now!’ co-host Goodman laments atomic bombings at Shelter Rock congregation (The Island Now)
Got some favorites of your own from 2015 or years past?