If some publishers who are not journalists have their way, they will cast headlines that suit their purpose, disregarding professional headline casting principles.
The Managing Director of a newspaper once met with his publisher who is a politician and they got talking about the coverage of the crisis in another party called ‘Congress National Party’ (CNP).
“I have been reading our paper on the crisis in CNP and I don’t understand why you people are not using the kind of headline that captures what they are going through,” the publisher said pointing to the copy of the day’s paper on the table.
“See this one you used today, “Unease as CNP leaders meet on convention”, the other day I saw ” CNP Governors reject convention guidelines”. I also remember seeing ” CNP members call removal of party Chairman”.
The MD in response said ” Sir, those are the right headlines that capture what the story contains,” hoping that the publisher will be easily convinced, but he was not.
“Though I’m not a journalist, I know a better headline that would have sold the paper more than the ones you people use,” the publisher countered.
The MD’s first instinct was to ask what headlines the publisher had in mind, but he chose not to and just nodded.
The publisher who wanted to be asked to suggest the better headline he preferred went ahead to say it.
” I know you people are the professional o, but if I were the editor, my headline would have been “Civil War in CNP”
The MD and some other guests who had been listening to the discussion could not hold back loud laughter as the publisher joined in laughing over his suggestion.
” Your suggestion is noted sir,” the MD responded as he managed to stop laughing over the “ingenious” headline by the publisher.
“It’s okay if you people don’t like my headline o. Don’t mind me, I should have read Mass Communication ” the publisher said as he asked what the MD really wanted to discuss with him ” before I turned myself to the editor”.
