I was happy for the opportunity one hot summer day recently to speak to a class of journalism students all about the ins and outs of headline writing and so I prepared a little talk on the subject in advance.
And when the day of the big lesson arrived, although I was a bit nervous about the encounter, I charged into my responsibility with no small amount of passion, hoping to ignite a flame or two in the 13 eager, young future newspaper reporters who sat in the classroom before me, attentive to my every utterance.
So, I began uttering.
“The biggest task of the headline writer is to capture the essence of the story and to do it with life and colour and without leading the reader to believe he’s about to read something in the article below, which, in fact, he fails to encounter,” I said. “An accurate headline, even if it’s dull, is still better than a lively one which distorts the meaning of the story it’s announcing.”
Hearing my thoughts on the topic expressed in such an intelligent way, I felt a surge of confidence and so I looked around at the group before me to see how it was being received. They were staring at me like people positively hungry for knowledge who were hearing the truth for the very first time and recognizing their need, I started laying out a veritable journalistic banquet for them.
“An important fact about headlines you always want to remember is that they represent probably your best chance to draw the busy reader into a story she might not otherwise stop and read,” I pronounced. “A reporter’s hard work and best effort can be all for naught if her article has been poorly sold off by a lazy or inattentive headline writer.”
More wise words and another glance around at the troops. But this time, not all of them were glancing back. One young man over in the corner was resting his head, face down on his desk, in obvious meditation on the statement I’d just made.
I continued, stressing how the size of the headline should bear some relevance to the significance of the story and warning against the urge to be too flippant, especially with serious stories.
Another look up, at this point, revealed a second meditator, two rows back, this one taking up a different position with his head resting on his arms which were resting on his desk and his face turned to the side. His eyes were closed, as he obviously sought to shut out other data and think only about headlines.
The lesson resumed. Getting headlines to fit. Writing headlines in the present tense. Taking care to avoid headlines clashing with other headlines on the page.
A third contemplator lowered his head to his desk and within seconds was breathing heavily, in an obviously deep, meditative state.
Apparently, I was getting somewhere.
Three down and 10 to go.
My lecture now nearing the 20-minute mark, I took another visual survey around the warm classroom to see how well the rest of the class was responding to what they were fortunate enough to be hearing. None of them had joined their three contemplative classmates, one of whom by this time had managed to curl himself into something resembling a fetal position, all the time sitting in his chair, but they all had adopted various poses which suggested apparent deep thought on their part.
One woman, who’d obviously freed her mind to follow the soaring flights of enlightenment I’d been releasing into the air before her, sat staring at me with a smile Madame Tussaud might have been proud to have achieved on one of the models in her museum. Her eyes, though appearing to be trained on me, were, in fact, wandering independently of each other, looking everywhere and nowhere at the same time. This is true concentration, I thought.
In the middle of the room, directly before me, sat a young man with his arms crossed over his chest, his head having fallen backwards over the back of his chair. His mouth was open as were his eyes which seemed glued to the ceiling tiles above him.
As the talk headed into its second 30 minutes, the surviving students went into other various learning positions and while most of them sat up straight, at least one young man’s eyes wandered upwards and I don’t believe I’ve ever seen eyes turned that far back in anyone’s head before. Several others, resting their heads on their hands, peered my way through eyes half-covered with drooping lids and at least two appeared to have developed a sort of glaze over theirs.
Needless to say, I was pretty happy with the way things were going and when I finished after about 45 minutes, they all seemed very happy too.
Except the guy in the corner who had been first to go into the meditative state and who took a while to come around. He seemed groggy, even disoriented.
But there was no mistaking that other quality on his face. It was the look of a man who now knew more than he expected he ever would about a subject.
I’ve seen that look before.
©1994 Jim Hagarty
