Re: God bless the media

[Jeff Hecht <jeff@jeffhecht.com>]

At 7:54 AM -0500 7/12/02, James Farlow wrote:
> The biggest newspaper in the state did a story on our work that was
> published July 7th.  I spent an afternoon with the reporter, showing him
> the fossils and explaining their significance.  I felt pretty good about
> the way the interview went, and when I saw the story, it was pretty
> good.  The headline, however, read:
>
> Sinkhole Exposes a Path to State's Paleolithic Past

Normally newspaper headlines are not written by the person who writes 
the story, but by a headline writer skilled in invoking what they 
think the story means in a very limited space and getting right words 
to fit there. They are remarkably successful much of the time. The 
howlers come when they aren't. Sounds like everything this headline 
writer knew came from The Flintstones. -- Jeff Hecht