Momnesia

Banging my Headline Against the Wall

AUGUSTA, GA. - I interned on the copy desk at the Augusta Chronicle, and I know how many people see a story before it goes to press and online (it felt like 100, but it was probably closer to 10); so how do things like this get through?

Family break-in victim while woman in Augusta burn unit

Congratulations! You have managed to write a sentence without a verb!

You had so many other options for this headline (none of mine are perfect, but they are improvements):

• "Family victimized while woman struggles in Augusta burn unit"
• "Family home burglarized while woman lies Augusta burn unit"
• "Burglars hit family of Athens burn victim at Doctors Hospital"
• "Family burgled as Athens victim lies in Augusta burn unit"

There are smart, wonderful people who work at this newspaper. I know how many hours they work each week. These people work doctors' hours on a fast-food worker's salary. And when management of any company makes the decision to grind up their employees in the name of profit, while the company's owners spend every weekend jet-setting around the world (can you say Enron?) - then your product quality plummets. And make no mistake about it, bean-counters: Your newspaper is NOT just an advertising delivery service. Your product exists only as long as people are interested in the content. And so long as you run your staff so ragged that they are too tired to use verbs, you will never recover.

Side Note: Because there is a certain class of person who lurks on blogs just to leave asshole comments - a class of person who has no class - I've begun moderating my comments. Sorry, readers. Some people exist solely to suck joy out of the world.