CHAPTER 9 WRITING HEADLINES AND CUTLINES

You have just delivered a story to your associate editor that is arguably the best you have ever written. The lead is first-rate, the body copy is flawless and the ending is textbook

However, the story might vanish into obscurity on any newspaper page if the accompanying headline does not entice or inform the reader.

Well-written headlines grab the reader's attention, convey clear, concise thoughts and dress up the publication. Poorly written headlines can mislead, confuse and even embarrass the newspaper staff, command and Navy. Headlines must be free of libelous statements and must not contain violations of security, accuracy, policy and propriety.

A reader often decides whether to read a story based on what the headline says. A headline tempts the reader to dig into the story. To do this, you, as a headline writer, must have a sense of what will attract the reader. You must have abroad vocabulary and enough versatility to say the same thing several ways to make sure the headline will fit the space allotted for it on the page.

In the following text, we cover the essentials you need to become an effective headline writer. Additionally, we examine the methods used to write cutlines (the explanatory matter supplementing photographs) in the final third of this chapter.

HEADLINE EVOLUTION

LEARNING OBJECTIVE: Evaluate the evolution of the headline.

The first American newspaper headlines were nothing more than labels. A large capital letter, called an "initial letter," may have been used to set off the first paragraph of each story. Sometimes the front-page headlines were one-line labels showing the origin of the news (England, France, Spain).

By the time of the Revolutionary War, American newspapers had made some progress in the art of writing headlines, but not much. A full-page account of the battle between the Bon Homme Richard and HMS Serapis, for example, might have been carried under a 10-point, Old English typeface headline which read as follows:

Figure 9-1. - Multidecked headline from the New York Sun following the assassination of President Lincoln.

Epic Sea Battle

An epic sea battle between the Bon Homme Richard and the HMS Serapis was waged on the high seas. . . .

During the Civil War, American newspapers began putting more information in their headlines, but their form was very different from what we are accustomed to today. Figure 9-1 shows a multidecked headline carried by the New York Sun over the story of the assassination of President Lincoln in 1865.

Toward the turn of the century (during the Spanish-American War), technical improvements and a circulation war between the Hearst and Pulitzer newspapers in New York helped speed the adoption of multicolumn headlines. Important stories were introduced by screaming headlines (banners) across the entire page, followed by as many as eight or more related heads. Sometimes headlines occupied more space than their stories.

However, by the end of World War I, many editors began experimenting with headlines that were more streamlined and more compact. They found the space they saved could be used more advantageously for news and advertising - especially advertising, which them as now, paid the bills.