Comments on: A case for boring headlines…

By: acline

acline — Tue, 28 Oct 2003 21:07:23 +0000

Bryan…good point! Let me extend your comment into this observation: Local papers are leading the fight for “boring” headlines!

By: bryan

bryan — Tue, 28 Oct 2003 20:36:11 +0000

Speaking as a former headline writer myself (cf., http://arguewithsigns.net/mt/archives/001001.html ), I see plenty of boring headlines. One from a local campus newspaper recently: “Pulitzer Prize winner speaks on campus.” This was a follow-up story, not the preview. “Council considers tax increase” or “City votes on zoning issue” are other examples that come to mind. I think you are perhaps spoiled by the craftsmen at the larger newspapers.

By: acline

acline — Tue, 28 Oct 2003 16:27:26 +0000

We outta create a logo for that! I’m serious. I’ve been thinking about my posts quite a bit lately–noticing that I’m writing long and dense.

Aren’t blog entries supposed to be short and pithy? Hell, no. They are supposed to be exactly what the author wants them to be. Think of the blogs that would be so much less interesting if their authors wrote short, easy entries, e.g. PressThink.

Geez, this has a lot of implications for the concept of audience–raising some interesting chicken-and-egg questions.

Man, we gotta start a movement!

Re: Aristotle

You mean they aren’t the same? hahaha!

By: Jay Manifold

Jay Manifold — Tue, 28 Oct 2003 16:14:46 +0000

I’m getting some insight into why neither of us is running a major metropolitan daily newspaper. “We Make Our Readers Work Harder!”
But proper focus undoubtedly is important, which in the context of typical headlines and the strategies behind them, is a little scary. “Nor … must they ever be allowed to raise Aristotle’s question: whether ‘democratic behaviour’ means the behaviour that democracies like or the behaviour that will preserve a democracy.” — CS Lewis, “Screwtape Proposes A Toast”

By: acline

acline — Tue, 28 Oct 2003 13:53:25 +0000

Jay…you take this in an interesting direction. I do not mean to suggest it’s bad to be monitorial. I would assert that it’s bad for the President, but that’s another matter.

I’m wondering if “boring” headlines would focus reading to those issues of most importance. If one has to work “harder” for it, I wonder if it’s logical to suppose that one will then work harder for a certain type of (politically useful) information.

By: Jay Manifold

Jay Manifold — Tue, 28 Oct 2003 13:43:21 +0000

I’ll say again that I don’t think there’s anything wrong with being a “monitorial citizen,” even — perhaps especially — at W’s level. Indecisive leadership frightens people more than uninformed leadership, for understandable if exasperating reasons of evolutionary psychology. We all have the same amount of time, and most of us read at maybe 250 words per minute. This paper quotes another one to the effect that “the median daily reading time for various text sources is much less than 20 minutes.” So how does the richest, most powerful country in the world keep going when its inhabitants read well under 5,000 words per day — “much less than” the equivalent of half a dozen typewritten pages of single-spaced text? Especially when much of what little they do read is purely technical, religious, or work-related?
I’d suggest two things that mitigate this: 1) they read the headlines and, for all the justified complaints about superficiality and bias, are actually pretty good at allocating their mental bandwidth to deal with any imminent threat (to borrow a phrase); and 2) however screwed up things may be in the US, they seem to be worse just about everywhere else.

By: paladin

paladin — Mon, 27 Oct 2003 15:02:22 +0000

What if the New York Times, the Paper of Record, the Gold Standard of Reporting, the God of All Journalists stopped doing stuff like this in Sunday’s paper? Headline: Why Are We Back in Vietnam? Bottom line of columnist and theatre critic Frank Rich: “At the tender age of six months, the war in Iraq is not remotely a Vietnam.”