A friend would say headlines on a newspaper are like snipers — hit or die. Without pulling the reader to a report at first glance, the headline is not worth the paper it is printed on. The war imagery may be quite misplaced in explaining the utility of headlines, though they did have a deep role in battles past of newspaper tycoons William Hearst and Joseph Pulitzer.
Whether or not Hearst said, “You furnish the picture and I will furnish the war”, the utility of screaming headlines for yellow journalism and bile was established from the time of the newspaper wars between the two tycoons.
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In this era of short attention spans and 24x7 news cycles, the headline has metamorphosed. The lapidary banner in the morning paper is brought down from its plinth, adding the who, what, why, where, when and how in a process called search engine optimisation. For, the newspaper has taken on a hybrid existence, and the entry points to its attractions are not only the broadsheet or the URL but also the beast called search engine.
A daily struggle
But the art of the headline will remain. To quote veteran editor Harold Evans, writing good headlines is 50% of text editors’ skills. Fresh on the news desk of a daily where facts are sacred and language is held with the utmost respect, writing good headlines, even for routine reports, turns into a daily struggle for a cub subeditor.
Summoning the skills you thought you had becomes difficult amid a clutch of professionals who can just turn around a copy with a turn of a phrase here and there. So, in comes the big story of the day, with all its drama and exclusiveness. The head of the desk says he has in mind three headlines for it, from the flamboyant to the matter-of-fact. And, here you are struggling with half a headline. Even after putting in years, the struggle does not ebb. In fact, it evolves. It is a slow realisation of the interconnectedness of the art and science of newspapering, an enjoyable challenge. The walls are in your mind.
Hidden in a report
The entity called the desk is fluid. When subbing a report, pause to think how you could have written the copy in a better way — minus the pace at which the reporter operates amid all the grind. The headline may be hidden somewhere there.
How the headline differs from advertisement copy is its pact with facts. Rules are to be followed even when trying to be creative. The syntax has to be in order. The words should speak. There should be a perfect sense of time, place and context. The news hierarchy has to be respected — you can’t just reduce the size of the font and fit in the headline you have in mind.
Where headlines are wordy, vague or confused, the newspaper seems to be in its dotage, Mr. Evans says. Dusting off his handbook for journalists from time to time helps. Never forget to linger on the example of a good headline pun he gives, “A sari without a fringe on top.” That was a daily’s headline of the report on a debate in Parliament on whether saris too revealing should be banned.