headlines

[John E Richardson]

Hi Deb,

nice to hear the opinion of a journalist on this. Working in the dept
that I do I've also heard similar tales about subs and their handiwork,
and not just subs of course. So we have to be careful when ascribing
agency for newspaper discourse, even before we get to intent.

The issue of headlines & space is an argument I have thrown at me many
times by the journos I work with - and much more forcefully than Deb
did! I realise that this isn't the usual focus of discussion on this
list, but please indulge me. An example from the recent past is
interesting here I think - The Sun printed a front page article
headlined 'Bonkers Bruno locked up' about the British boxer Frank Bruno
who had some kind of nervous breakdown. They caught a lot of flak for
the headline & the report, from both commentators & their readers and
rightly so. So much so in fact, that by the later editions of this
newspaper, the headline was changed to read 'Sad Bruno in Mental Home'.
Following the incident the BBC wrote:

"The next day, SANE received a telephone call from The Sun. The paper
wanted to launch an appeal in Bruno's name to raise funds for the mental
health charity, and offered SANE five hundred words on the problems of
mental illness. The Sun gave more coverage to the issues under a more
acceptable headline: "Time and space to heal". A Fund for Frank was
launched, and a few days later Marjorie Wallace agreed to meet Rebekah
Wade, the paper's editor, for lunch to discuss what language was
acceptable if "bonkers" wasn't.

"Rebekah Wade asked me to lunch and she said, 'Why can't I use bonkers,
and what else would do?' What I said there was really quite simple. I
remember having the conversation with her predecessor, David Yelland. He
said, 'What's a three letter word I can put in a headline rather than
nut or mad?' I said, 'What about ill? Because that's what it is - ill.
Someone's ill and they go to hospital.' [Rebekah] sort of said. 'Well
yeah, maybe'."
http://www.bbc.co.uk/ouch/news/btn/bruno_sun.shtml

There are many things going on in this example and in this quote. Of
course there are ideological differences between riot and demonstration
or between mad and ill and should ask why mad is always preferred over
ill in tabloid reports. It is because the discourse processes used to
put the news together are ideological *in themselves*. We should perhaps
ask why is 'space' the deciding factor in writing a headline? Of course
it's common-sense to say that headlines are big, huge in the case of
British tabloids, and this is why, but why not just drop the font in
order that a word with a 'w' can be included? Because the discourse
process is rationalised and hence underpined by a specific ideology of
news production: the image of the reader, the brand of the paper and the
relationship between the paper and the readers. The progression over the
last 100 years or so towards larger and larger font sizes in headlines
(in broadsheets too) obviously results in progressively simpler clauses
(shorter words, deleted determiners, simplified processes) eventually
requiring certain newspapers to use noun phrases in headlines to
describe the reported action/event, or to delete the agent/object rather
than using full verb phrases.
Thanks for reading this far!

all the best
John

> Hi fellow CDA-ers, the discussion about headlines is interesting in
terms of analysis. I don't know anything about your various backgrounds,
so excuse me if this is telling you what you already know, but as a
journalist it often infuriated me to find that the headline that
appeared on my story sometimes not only trivialised the substance, but
was diametrically opposed to the content of the piece! The headlines are
written by the subs and the journalist doesn't see them until they are
printed. The subs work under huge pressure of time and space and I don't
envy them, moreover I think sometimes it is the issue of space, rather
than ideological inclination, that makes them choose one word over
another, so that for example, words with "i"s or "t"s or "l"s will be
more popular than those with "w"s in a headline. In the body of a story,
the journalist has more leeway to describe an event as a protest rather
than a riot, and their choice of word may have ideological
underpinnings, but a subeditor trying to headline the same story, may
go with "riot" because it is the only word they can think of that will
fit. Of course in terms of public perception of events constructed in
the news, the ideological work is still being done by the headline,
regardless of the subeditor's intent. Hope this is not off topic
> cheers
> deb
>
> ________________________________
>
> From: CDA-DISCUSS Discussion List on behalf of John E Richardson
> Sent: Wed 1/06/2005 8:47 PM
> To: CDA-DISCUSS at LISTSERV.LINGUISTLIST.ORG
> Subject: Re: Halmari and Ostman (2001)
>
>
>
> Hi Linnea (and everyone else),
>
> thanks for these thoughts. Unfortunately I couldn't get round to reading
> the articles this month (so many things to do...) so I have nothing
> useful to add. Sorry
> I was very interested in your point about headlines though - and the
> suggested article from the J of Pragmatics that I'll definitely look up.
> I say this because I am currently completing a mini-project looking at
> transitivity in newspaper headlines reporting the invasion of Iraq.
> Specifically the 6 weeks of UK coverage (eight national newspapers)
> until Bush declared 'mission accomplished'. While this is not what I
> would call a large corpora (2100-ish articles) I certainly agree that
> headline analysis is a interesting approach to newspaper analysis. In
> this case, I think that it is a useful starting point to studying the
> ways that the sampled newspapers re/presented the war, and I think that
> it has produced some interesting findings. For instance (relating to
> your points about social/economic influence on discourse) the ratio of
> NP to VP headlines correlates with the social class of the target
> audience; 'red top' tabloids use NP headlines the most, broadsheets the
> least, with the mid-market tabloids in the middle. There are also
> differences between transitive, intransitive, relational verbs, etc. I
> could send my findings/arguments out to those interested, once this is
> written up.
>
> These are some of my thoughts relating to your questions about future
> readings. I think that, as you suggest, for the next few months we could
> read the articles that have been suggested. Following this, list members
> can suggest other articles to read and lead discussion (which, to be
> honest, I thought already occurred!). These articles may be published
> stuff or work in progress from list members. Speaking personally, I
> found it very helpful when members read & commented on my chapter on CDA
> & 'Islamophobic' discourse. If Linnea gets too many suggestions from the
> expanding membership, then perhaps in the future we could think about a
> voting system. But, as I understand it, there isn't a pressing need for
> this at the moment (please, correct me if I'm wrong).
>
> Many thanks to Linnea & Noriko for their continuing work for the list.
>
> all the best
> John
>
>


John E Richardson
Dept of Journalism Studies
Sheffield University