Japanese submarine shells Oregon beach was the top news in the judgement of editors June 22, 1942.
Smaller one column headlines mumble – “Oh by the way, you might want to read this.”
There is an art to making a good headline. It acts as story summary, circus barker and indexer all at the same time.
That is what I will miss when the last paper rolls off the press and we are all stuck with flickering computer screens of sameness.
You may not agree with the sorting process that goes into making a printed page but at least a human has made an attempt to sort the stories. Not a faceless algorithm weighting decisions based on the type of shoe you bought last week.
A few variables that go into making decisions on story weight are:
• When – Was the event recent?
• Who – Do we know the participants?
• Why – Will it affect me? Was it a surprise?
• How – Anything unusual about the event?
• What – Is it a trend? A tradition? Did we learn anything?
A successful paper figures out the voice that connects with readers. Readers become familiar with the voice and use it to navigate and make their own decisions on what they want to read.
When a paper redesigns there is a period of awkward readjustment for the readers as they search for navigation clues in the new landscape.
Some newspapers shout in bold tabloid voices, others speak in more measured tones, some have a strong sense of design, others look like ransom notes.
In print the headline writer has the added difficulty of finite space. When I started in journalism school we were given spacing codes for various letters. Big letters like W and M take up more real estate than H or E. Smallest of all is the letter I. The capital L takes up more space than lower case l. When pages were made up copy editors calculate the maths as they wrote trying not to leave big islands of white space around the headline.
They could not see the type flowing onto the page as they do today with visual page design computer programs. Pages were locked into grids and columns, short briefs were typeset to fill out odd corners when main stories came up short.
In this era it was common to have over 15 headlined stories in addition to packages of brief items so headline writers were busy reading stories and trying to come up with good summary heads that fit the space.
On June 22, 1942 the Telegram-Tribune headline screamed that a Japanese submarine had shelled a beach in Oregon. It was the first attack on American mainland soil since the War of 1812. However given our vantage point in history the nine 5-inch shells that landed in the sand and swamp near Astoria, Oregon were nothing more than a tiny footnote in the war, no injuries, no damage.
After many days of full page headlines the reality that the war was going to be news for a long time began to have an effect on the page design. Shouting full page headlines needed to be reserved for major events.
By June 29, 1942 headlines were more measured. Big news of the day was Rommel's advance against British troops in North Africa driving them back to Egypt.
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- Economic impact of war, World War II week by week
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Headlines are the genius of communication, and their skilled writers should all be graced with raises. While most people ramble on and on detailing needless facts and opinions when telling us their ‘stories,’ few can squeeze the gist out of them in a couple of words.
This week’s award goes to the writer of Stockton Record’s banner — “BANKRUPT!”
The picture of a woman weeping raised the decibel level even higher!
Newspapers were also physically bigger back then, allowing for more stories on a single page. But still . . . looked pretty messy. Design has come a long way, as has journalism itself.
Good point, that paper printed today would be about two columns narrower. There was a lot of filler that was thrown in to pad out pages and stories were shorter in 1942.