Shannon McEnerney | March 26, 2010
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When Rick Newkirk, a sports copy editor at the (Louisville, Ky.) Courier-Journal, visited her J351 Newspaper Editing class, his insight brought the real world to her.
“Guest speakers bring a lot – they take you out of the classroom while you’re still in the classroom,” Ely said.
Newkirk, BAJ ‘06, spoke to lecturer Nancy Comiskey’s class Wednesday about copyediting and headline writing. After four years with the Courier-Journal, Newkirk said he’s learned what’s important about sports as one of the sections in the newspaper.
“People like it,” he said. “People escape from every day life to sports.”
He offered advice for the student editors, whose assignments cover everything from headline writing to tough decision-making.
Newkirk showed the class examples of different headlines – some good, some bad – and explained how the headline came about and whether or not it was successful.
One of the headlines, “From Tee to Shining Tee,” was for the Ryder Cup, a golf tournament between U.S. and European golfers recently held in Louisville. Newkirk said it is a successful headline because it combines a good reference to an American song while also tying in the golf relevance.
Another headline, “Panty Raid proves she’s top drawer,” demonstrated the importance of tone in headline writing. The headline, which accompanied the story about the horse Panty Raid, balances the clever with the serious.
“Think about tone,” Newkirk said. “You want to have the correct tone in a headline, you have to
feel it out. You don’t want to be too cutesy or crass, but you also want to be clever.”
Try for headlines that work with photos, Newkirk advised. “Barely out of reach for Cats,” ran above a photo showing a basketball in midair as former Kentucky player Joe Crawford reached for it – just out of his grasp.
“The headline ties all the elements together,” Newkirk said.
Another headline, about fathers and sons playing for Georgetown, read “The father, the son and Hoya spirit.”
“Anytime there is religious overtone in a headline, it’s always discussed,” Newkirk said of the decision making process. He said that the staff performs the “reasonable person” test, which asks the question of whether or not a reasonable person would be offended. That headline, Newkirk said, passed the test.
Newkirk warned the students to not try too hard in headlines. If you’re trying too hard to come up with a good, clever headline, then it most likely will be a bad headline.
One headline Newkirk showed, “Curlin has certainly won thorough bread,” tries too hard, he said. It’s not doing readers a service, as it’s a headline that cannot be read once to get the meaning that “bread” in this instance means money.
If you have to read the headline more than once, then you know you’ve lost the reader, Newkirk said.
It all comes back to tone, he said, and knowing what not to write. The editor also must thoroughly understand the story before attempting to write a headline.
“Really grasp what the story’s about, and read a story until you understand it,” Newkirk said.
He sometimes uses an idiom dictionary to help him brainstorm for headlines.
“Mix around words and phrases until you come up with something that works,” Newkirk said.
While there is more of a chance to express creativity in writing than editing, Newkirk said being an editor has helped him to become a better writer.
Ely said she liked the examples Newkirk showed.
“He gave a good look into what’s happening right now,” she said.
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