THE DYING ART OF WRITING HILARIOUS HEADLINES

Coming up with awesome headlines used to be an art-form. The brightest sub-editors at every paper would be tasked with crafting a handful of clever words in bold at the top of an already laid-out story with a view to attracting as many people to the story as possible. Sometimes those words didn’t even have to have much to do with the story. As long as they were catchy and drew the reader in.

The best headlines were clever, funny and punny – like the time a captain of an aircraft flipped-out mid-flight.

Or when a croc launched itself at a guy in a dingy:

A great headline on the front page of a metropolitan daily could net the paper an extra 30,000 sales and ensure its author wouldn’t have to buy a beer for a week. But those days have mostly gone. The internet doesn’t care about clever wordplay. Now it’s all about getting the SEO (search engine optimisation) right. So if you want someone to read a story online about a guy nearly being taken by a croc – “G’DAY BAIT” won’t cut it. It’s gotta contain the words “crocodile”, “man”, “dingy”, “Darwin”, “escape” and “lucky”. In fact, it’s probably best to have the whole story in the headline. The online version of the Daily Mail does this really well. There was once a story about a guy who lost some weight and became a model and the Daily Mail headline was: "CHILDREN SHOUTED 'MOOBS!' AT ME IN THE STREET, BUT NOW I MODEL IN CATWALK FASHION SHOWS: BULLIED TEENAGER LOST 9 STONE IN 18 MONTHS AND NOW WANTS TO ENCOURAGE OTHERS." What?! I lost my train of thought halfway through. And where’s the pun?

Anyway, since this is a newsletter that allows me to go down nostalgia street, here are my favourite newspaper headlines ever - and the stories behind them.

New York Post, 14/5/2011

Beneath one of the greatest headlines of all time, The Post’s journalists leaned heavily on alliteration when they wrote: "It wasn't just plots to kill Americans that got a rise out of him. It turns out that terror titan Osama bin Laden had a stash of smut to liven up his lair."

It’s important to note the editor of the New York Post at the time was Col Allan - ex editor of Sydney’s Daily Telegraph and most famous for coming up with the legendary NATION OF BASTARDS headline after seeing some stats which showed a slight uptick in children being born out of wedlock. The second most famous thing Col did was take Kevin Rudd to a strip club. Anyway, it’s clear his hands were all over this because Americans don’t really say “wanking” - which means the headline served the dual purpose of making people laugh and spreading proper English.

In any case, OSAMA BIN WANKIN’ clearly eclipsed the effort of The Post’s city-rival The Daily News, which only managed the comparatively tame: "OSAMA PORN LADEN".

New York Post, 15/4/1983. New York.

A gunman had robbed a Bronx strip club and forced all the customers and employees into a back room where he killed, and then decapitated, one of them.  The headlines’s co-author, Steve Dunleavy, responded to criticism of the headline’s crassness by saying, “What should we have written? 'Decapitated cerebellum in tavern of ill repute'?” Sidenote: Dunleavy was also Australian.

Sunday Herald Sun, 13/3/1993. Melbourne.

Newspapers used to like being first to call an election and in this case the Sunday Herald Sun took a gamble. 40,000 copies of the newspaper with this headline on the front page went out before the editor realised his mistake.

The Sun 13/3/1986. London.

The story, which appeared in the London Sun newspaper, details struggling comedian Freddie Starr going home to his girlfriend's place after a show and demanding that she make him a sandwich. When it wasn't forthcoming, Starr put her pet hamster “Supersonic” between two slices of bread and proceeded to eat it. The story was later revealed to be totally made up by publicist Max Clifford in an attempt to ignite Starr's career. Legendary Sun editor Kelvin MacKenzie is thought to be responsible for the headline and accompanying strap: “Comic put a live pet in sandwich, says beauty”.

The Melbourne Truth, 31/6/1987. (Melbourne)

Billy Snedden came within three seats of being prime minister in 1974 and had been the longest-serving speaker in the House of Representatives. So there was much interest when The Truth quoted a policeman who said the politician had died “at the peak of physical congress”. “SNEDDEN DIED ON THE JOB” appeared on The Truth's front page beneath a pointer to “TENNIS GIRL’S LESBIAN TERROR”. But it wasn't just The Truth that was up to its ears in sordid intrigue over the former Opposition Leader's passing. The Sydney Morning Herald quoted a police inspector saying Sir Billy was wearing a condom and “it was loaded.”

New York Post, 24/1/2003. New York.

Writer Scott Ott coined the term “Axis of Weasel” when he used it in a satirical, Onion-style blog called ScrappleFace, in which he had US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld apologising for referring to France and Germany as an “Axis of Weasels”. Two days later the New York Post used the term in a non-satirical way when it thundered: AXIS OF WEASEL - GERMANY AND FRANCE WIMP OUT ON IRAQ.

New York Post 10/11/2012. New York.

The thing about these headlines is that they’re products of a wrong-minded sexist, misogynist, racist, and ableist era.   But if you ignore the toxicity, you might be able to get some joy out of this headline accompanying a story about CIA boss David Petraeus quitting over the affair with his biographer, Paula Broadwell. A subsequent story produced another great Post headline “IN THE CALL OF BOOTY.”

New York Post 11/03/2008

During a Federal Government investigation into a prostitution ring run by an escort agency called Emperors Club VIP, it was revealed that New York Governor Eliot Spitzer was one of its clients. Spitzer would resign six days after this story broke. Then, when he tried to return to politics three years later, the New York Post proved the joke wasn’t done when it trumpeted: “HERE WE HO AGAIN”.