Editorial
Front Page - Friday, September 10, 2010
Are we there yet?
It's all in the headline
Jay Edwards
I don’t ever buy tabloids, but when you choose the wrong check-out line at the grocery store, nothing makes the time go by quicker than looking up and reading – “DOCTORS SUCCESSFULLY REMOVE BANJO FROM ALABAMA MAN’S KNEE!” or “SANTA’S ELVES REALLY SLAVES FROM THE PLANET MARS!” or even, “PACK OF WILD COCKER SPANIELS TERRORIZES WYOMING!”
I always thought it would have been cool to work at the New York Post. What better place to learn the ends and outs of unbiased reporting than at the paper the Columbia Journalism Review said of back in 1980, “The New York Post is no longer merely a journalistic problem, it is a social problem – a force for evil.”
But for now, working at The Daily Record will just have to suffice I guess.
It was back in the autumn of 1801 that Alexander Hamilton founded the Post, aided by $10,000 he had raised from investors. Later, the most famous 19th-century editor at the paper was the poet and abolitionist William Cullen Bryant.
Since 1993, it has been owned by media mogul Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation, which had owned it previously from 1976 to 1988. It is the sixth-largest newspaper in the U.S. by circulation.
Murdoch imported the sensationalist “tabloid journalism” style of many of his Australian and British newspapers, such as The Sun (the highest selling daily newspaper in the UK), and here are some of the headlines that followed –
‘I AM DEATH WISH VIGILANTE’ (Bernie Goetz turns himself in; 1985) The facts of the case were comparatively simple. A few days before Christmas in 1984 Bernhard Goetz boarded a southbound Seventh Avenue express near his home at 14th Street. There were four teenage boys in the car—Barry Allen, Troy Canty, James Ramseur, and Darrell Cabey. They were laying over most of the seats and generally behaving badly. Goetz may not have noticed it as he entered, but the other passengers had moved to the far end of the car.
One of the boys looked at Goetz and casually asked, “How are ya?” Then two of the boys approached him and asked for five dollars. Goetz, thinking he was about to be mugged, took a gun from his pocket and fired it five times. He may have fired all five in rapid succession or he may have paused after the fourth and said, “You seem to be all right; here’s another.” He then went to the platform between the subway cars, unfastened the safety chain, and escaped into the tunnel. On December 31 he surrendered to the police in Concord, New Hampshire.
I saw him in Manhattan in the fall of 1988, in FAO Schwarz Toy Store. He was looking at some toy trains.
‘KISS YOUR ASTEROID GOODBYE’ (Meteor Misses Earth; 1998) This one, thankfully, did miss.
‘HEADLESS BODY IN TOPLESS BAR’ (1992) The all time classic and the title of the book of headlines put together by the staff of the Post.
• On November 8, 2000, the Post printed “BUSH WINS!” in a huge headline, although the presidential election remained in doubt because of the recount needed in Florida. Like the Post, many other newspapers around the country published a similar headline after the four major TV networks called the election for Bush.
• On April 21, 2006, several Asian-American advocacy groups protested the use of the headline “Wok This Way” for a Post article about President Bush’s meeting with the president of the People’s Republic of China.
Another Big Apple publication that has tried to keep up with the Post is the New York Daily News, which has had a few gems of its own –
‘FORD TO CITY: “DROP DEAD”’ (1975)
Set in huge bold letters, the headline screamed across Page 1 of the paper on Oct. 30, 1975. In six taut syllables, it brought home its message with the power of a knockout punch: At the height of New York’s fiscal crisis, President Gerald R. Ford had declined to bail the city out.
Those six syllables, as Mr. Ford later acknowledged, almost certainly lost him New York State in his 1976 race against Jimmy Carter, and with it, the presidency.
‘DEAD!’ (Picture of the electric chair execution of Ruth Snyder, a Queens housewife, who with the aid of her corset salesman lover, planned and carried out the murder of her husband. 1928)
‘WHO’S A BUM!’ (Describ-ing the Brooklyn Dodgers winning the 1955 World Series, their only championship before Walter O’Malley’s infamous relocation to California)
‘CLOSE BUT NO CIGAR’ (Senate fails to convict Clinton; 1999)
‘IT’S WAR’ (Picture of the second plane going into the World Trade Center, 2001)
The Daily News served as the model for the Daily Planet in the Superman movies, with the large globe in the real-life lobby serving as a handy emblem for the Planet.
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