Headlines

I attended a headline writing seminar today. Good stuff. Best part, I have to say, were the headlines that went wrong.

Viet official's twin
tells why he defecated
(oh my ... should have been defected)

Dolly cancels performances, lays band
(I bet they enjoyed that - should have been lays off band)

Florida reporter completes sentence (go figure. LOL. Was talking about a jail sentence)

Iraqi head seeks arms (really? did he need a torso, too?)

Doctor testifies in horse suit (I would pay to see this)

Elliott's size
no obstacle
for Trojans
(I bet he doesn't get lots of dates!)

Free vaccinations
sought for every
child by Clinton
(there are probably many of them.) Easy way to fix this headline:
Clinton seeks
free vaccinations
for every child (voila! or as the local editor gal said: Bwallah!)

4H girl wins contest
as best hoer in county
(swear to goodness, these are all REAL headlines)

Lumberjacks still do it by hand (I bet they have arms like Popeye!)

You can put pickles up yourself (no, thanks)

After spill, jockey's business falls off (ouch!)

Fertile Woman Dies in Climax (these are towns in Illinois)

Farmer
Bill Dies
In House (poor old fella - actually this is about farming legislation)

Summer ends for 36,000 PISD kids
(read headlines out loud after you write them, I'd be PISD, too, if summer ended for me)

Stating the obvious: Women make the best moms (no shit?)

Good one: Wife gets snippy over vasectomy refusal

Gees, I did feel REALLY old during the conference. In my early days of reporting, we had VDTs (video display terminals) and we had to hard count the headlines. We had a column of space and we knew the count for the headline and we had to make it fit. Today, you have everything on computers and you don't have to worry about letter count, etc. *sigh* I've joked around about the my first work computer having a pterodactyl in the monitor typing out my words on a stone tablet.