Headline writer’s poor form
Paid-subscriber-first post: How an appalling headline helps us understand one of journalism’s “dirty secrets”.
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My recent post about the “worst headline of the year” received robust feedback from far and wide, not only from animal lovers who were outraged by the jokes our daily newspaper made about a dead dog but also from professional journalists.
One of my former colleagues pointed out: “This is a most egregious example but most of [The Courier-Mail’s] punny headlines are inappropriate and do nothing to sell the product.”
It got me thinking about the way the annual Queensland Clarion Awards and the national Walkley Awards choose to acknowledge the craft of sub-editors: judging them by the headlines they write.
Inevitably, it’s a “clever” pun-based headline that wins the award.
But does being able to use a witty turn of phrase (even when it’s not required) make the person who wrote the headline the best sub-editor in the business?
It does not. Writing headlines is just one part of what subs do; it just happens to be the part that is easily judged.
The core talents of checking facts, correcting spelling and grammar, trimming to length and redrafting poorly written work are more difficult to assess.
One of the “dirty secrets” of journalism is that many reporters are not very good writers.
Some well-known journos are great at cultivating contacts, uncovering a story, or being in the right place at the right time, but not at stringing words together.
Presenting their raw copy to a panel of judges alongside the final published work would be a much better way to judge the sub-editor’s craft.
But that’s never going to happen — because many of the “best” reporters also have extremely high opinions of themselves and very fragile egos.
Disclosure: Brett Debritz has worked as a sub-editor in Australia, Southeast Asia, the United Kingdom and the Middle East. He has never submitted three headlines to an awards panel.