September 29, 2005

Adventures in Headline Writing!

Okay, I have exactly one minute to mock my betters in the journalism game, but this one was a little too funny to let lay: Wind-fueled fire threatens S. Calif. homes

You're saying that wind fueled the fire?! Meaning that if it serves as a fuel, we could run cars by filling up their tanks with blowing air?

Our energy crisis is solved.

Okay, so I realize that wasn't worth wasting a minute on.

UPDATE!! THEY'RE TEACHABLE! I just noticed (11:33 a.m.) that the headline has been edited at 10:41 a.m. to read "Wind-Fanned Fire..." THANK YOU, Headline Writer Guy!

(Although I believe--were I an editor--that I would have stuck with something more common, such as "Windblown.")

Posted by Terry Oglesby at September 29, 2005 09:02 AM
Comments

On the other hand, the writer and/or editor probably spent an hour on thinking up the darned thing. You're 59 minutes ahead of them.

Posted by: skinnydan at September 29, 2005 09:15 AM

Yes, I know, but bloggers don't have editors, so my product is by default vastly inferior.

Posted by: Terry Oglesby at September 29, 2005 09:47 AM

I thought that just meant your stuff was true and theirs was... edited.

Posted by: skinnydan at September 29, 2005 10:10 AM

Truth?! Feh--anyone can do that. Journalists now operate at a much higher level of enlightenment where silly little things like basic scientific literacy are meaningless.

Posted by: Terry Oglesby at September 29, 2005 10:51 AM

The writer and editor were no doubt flooded with Possumblog linked scorn and they saw the error of their ways and corrected it post-haste.

Posted by: Nate at September 29, 2005 11:44 AM

Possumblog is just so danged influential and powerful that way, you know.

Posted by: Terry Oglesby at September 29, 2005 12:10 PM