One of the things I feel compelled to do in my final days in the editor's desk is offer an apology to the many reporters who have toiled for me over the years.
And why would that be?
Well, it's not for my at times volcanic temper, though for the most part that was usually aimed at the technology we did battle with every day, not a human target.
So what's the deal?
Well, let's once again pull back the drapes on this great mystery known as journalism, in particular as it pertains to the print version.
In other words, that beautiful print edition many of you continue to hold in your hands each day.
Ironically, this does not apply to this blog, which appears online.
Every day, we run dozens of stories, all of which are written by reporters.
But there is one thing that the reporters don't write.
That would be the headline that appears on those stories.
Headlines are written by editors who process that copy.
At one time - yes, I think I can still remember those days - nearly every newspaper had something called a copy desk. It is where editors pored over stories looking for mistakes, checking facts, and reviewing spelling and grammar.
It's where the print edition was actually laid out each night, sent to the composing room where it was manually built - or 'pasted up' - as we used to refer to it.
Both the copy desk and the composing room are long gone - victims to a changing industry and budget cuts.
But one thing that has not changed is that reporters do not write the headlines that appear on their stories.
Unfortunately, it's their name on the story. The editor who wrote the headline is for the most part anonymous.
That includes the headline that appears on the front page.
I guess I have written a thousands of headlines over the years. And I am quite sure I am responsible for many angry calls to reporters, usually from the subject of a story who wanted to complain about the headline, either the one on the story or the one that graced our front page. The story most likely was fine, but it was the headline that really set the reader off.
That usually fell in my lap.
As I already admitted once this week, there is some truth in the complaints I have fielded over the years that the front page treatment of a story was meant only to sensationalize a story and sell newspapers.
Guilty as charged.
Yes, we want to sell as many newspapers as we can each day. It's part of the job. Not the only part and certainly not the most important part of the job, but absolutely a part of it.
Remember that this is part of the art of a tabloid newspaper. That front page is meant to lure in customers.
Writing headlines - especially when it comes to tabloid newspapers - is a fast-disappearing art form. There is a fine line that we walk every day. The fact is that the headlines that appear online have a different function than those that appear in print. Online headlines increasingly are meant to appeal to the algorithms that rule the online world. But it makes for boring headlines. It wants us to use full names, such as Philadelphia Phillies in sports stories, something we would never do in print.
For that print edition, we routinely take the most complicated story you can imagine and try to boil it down to three or four words that both explain the story and lure in the readers.
So when the community decides to raise their voice against a proposal for a topless bar in their neighborhood, as happened a few decades back in Ridley Township, they storm the commissioners meeting and demand their elected leaders use local zoning laws to thwart the plan.
The headline that appeared on the front page of the next morning's Daily Times:
EROGENOUS ZONING.
Yeah, I'm going to miss this job.
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