The Newspaper Man is Defunct - Part 21 - This is Where the Headline Goes

By TRB

Don't talk to newspaper reporters. They lie. Television reporters are the same. Liars. And the large majority of them don't even know it.

Just looking at the words above me, I would say they are a pretty good news story lead. Although most editors would prefer one sentence packed with who, what, when, where, and sometimes why. You see the so-called "hard" news story begins with the formula. There is a formula at work here. But I have got ahead of myself. The body of the story doesn't always follow the headline. Sometimes there is a "kicker." A kicker is basically a sub-headline (not to be confused with an actual sub-head) with just a little more information about the story underneath. It is meant to draw your attention into the body of the story.

So let's make up a "story." Say the headline is "Woman Decapitates Husband" - that's a good head, concise, strong verb rarely seen in civilized nations. I'm sold on the story just by the verb in the headline. But not all readers are news "junkies." Some need just a bit more information to draw them in. This is the kicker's job; it is meant to "kick" you right into the story. It's usually just a bit smaller type size than the headline. A good kicker for this "story" would be "Says She Thought He Was Ugly" - at this point I am ready to read the story.

Every news reporter wants a story like this. These are the easy-to-write ones. Who? The wife, obviously. What? She chopped off her husband's head, with an axe no less. When? While watching television. Where? Right there in their own parlor. Why? Because she thought he was ugly.

So the "lead" sentence of the story would go something like this:

Wielding an axe and frustrated with what she called his "ugliness," Jane Doe, 35, an Allston woman decapitated her husband, John, 37, tonight as he sat watching "America's Got Talent."

That would only be the first sentence. A lead on a story like this would require a paragraph. But the who, what, when where and why is all in this one sentence, so I have done my job. Don't mess with me.

The body of the story, now known as the "headless husband," is easily acquired. You simply talk to the neighbors, friends, maybe the local cops to see if there have been reports of domestic disturbances at that address in the past. Where did they go to school? Where did they meet? When did they marry? Was Mrs. Doe a bit short of temper, maybe? Readers want to know.

This is where the body of this "story" would go, but as you know, it is not a real story - just a half-ass lesson in journalism. I never liked murders anyway, probably because you never get the whole story.You can't You can never be objective, no matter what you do, everything you will write in your life will be subjective. Why? Because the words have to be arranged into sentences and those into paragraphs and those piled, one on top of the other, into a story. And you can't do that without leaning the story in one direction or the other. So back off journalism professors. Stop teaching that it can be done. It can't.

A real murder: A military division is in the field performing mock battles. While this is happening, one of the soldiers is sneaking back to the military community every night to have sex with another soldier's wife. This other soldier isn't sneaking anywhere. He sleeps in the field at night, as all the soldiers are expected to do. The wife is feeling guilty a couple of weeks later. During a phone conversation, her mother has convinced her to come clean about the affair so she and her husband can start anew.

Okay so far. But really bad advice from the mother.

The wife tells him. She cries, she pleads for forgiveness. But the husband isn't really interested in all of this. He wants revenge. He's a soldier and getting his hands on a weapon is as easy for him as it is for an office worker to get a pencil.

An hour or so after her tearful admission, the soldier has murdered one of his best friends. There are many people in a room. They are all crying. The wife is crying because the MPs are taking her husband away and she might also be crying because her lover is dead. Crying for both, I mean. The murderer is crying because just over an hour ago his entire life was looking good. Now it is broken forever. Hell, I am almost crying.

Many murders are like this. The emotional element just throws you into another dimension. Really bad car wrecks do that too and you have refused to go to them. An editor actually tells you he will fire you if you don't go to one. You tell him to do what he thinks is right. Editors are usually failed journalists, or worse, MBAs, anyway. They take them off the street beat, stick them in an office where it is hoped they can not harm anyone. The true newsman's editor exists, but he usually drinks and smokes too much and he's only 50 and you are at his funeral.

It is always the guys with the briefcases, isn't it? Seriously, James Brown told me this once. Uh huh. The guys with the briefcases. They just know something about you, something maybe not good about you is in that briefcase. But I am dithering here and dropping names as well. That is always a bad sign for an aging journalist. If you are not careful, pretty soon you are telling war stores about wars you weren't even at. James Brown would have said it just like that.

So let's get back to the nuts and bolts of this thing called the newspaper. Can it even tell just the truth? Is it full of slanted, out-of-context sandwich-meat news that tells you nothing new and can't even get the weather right? Why are they cutting down all those trees to make these damn things? Those trees are more important to our environment and our health than those newspapers are to our knowledge of things.

Did you know that newspapers have continuously, since their birth, under-represented the interests and the concerns of people of color and women? That's just something they do. This lack of coverage has perpetuated ignorance and promoted insensitivity down through the ages, right up to the present. Mainstream newspapers don't really cover news about people of color and women. They shy away from certain parts of town too. There's even something called "black journalism." (I'll write more about that some other time.)

When I first began writing for newspapers there were stories that were, hard news, there was soft news, feature news, breaking news, news editorials, followup news, in-depth news. Now it is all just mixed together and spiced with what is called infotainment. Some starlet is not wearing panties. We simply have to know more.

And right there, that is when newspapers jumped off the cliff, that's when they began to die. Oh, but infotainment had so much to do with killing the newspaper. Forget about online newspapers.

Circulation was dropping before online newspapers even became a factor. Why would you want a newspaper when you could get the same infotainment on your television at home? The newspaper committed suicide by trying desperately to be something it was not. And then, finally it succeeded. It became something it was not. But it was not a newspaper. We used to care about news

What was news? Who decided what it was? What was involved in the decision-making around how much coverage a story would receive? How long would it run? From what angle would it be covered? Where would it be placed in the "news hole", the news pages?

But she wasn't wearing underwear.

This is how this particular story ends.