Last Updated: December 29, 2000
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Getting humor into newspapers
The tricky business of using humor
It’s not nearly as dangerous as you might think...
By Rick Horowitz
I broach the subject gingerly; I’m speaking, after all, to a roomful
of journalists — highly talented, easily spooked. I’ll settle for
a quick show of hands.
“Is there anyone in the room...” I begin, my voice the very essence
of timidity. “Is there anyone in the room — and I know it’s a long
shot — who has ever worked in a community where one of your elected officials,
or one of your business leaders, or some other prominent person in town
has ever done anything...laughable?”
An instant forest of upraised arms, a field of grins; they never saw
it coming. I press my advantage.
“Did you laugh at them?” Some heads are nodding. “Did you laugh
at them in print?” Some heads are nervous. I try another one.
“Has anything ever happened in your community that deserved a good-natured
smile? (More hands. More teeth.) Did you smile at it?
Did you smile at it in print?”
And we’re off! We’re talking about humor — sharp or subtle, witty
or wacky or wicked. The needle. The slapstick. The blunderbuss.
Humor in newspapers — the very idea makes some otherwise confident writers,
writers just like the ones in this room, turn suddenly humid. And
their editors are often every bit as nervous. They’ve heard of all
the dangers lurking, including, of course, the biggest danger of all:
What if we get letters?
“Dear Mr. Horowitz,” writes the woman from (honest-to-God) Peoria.
“I found your column on April 16 totally absurd — unless it was ‘tongue
in cheek.’ Was it? It certainly was very misleading for gullible
people....”
This would be the column suggesting that the latest U.S. Census was
even more dangerous than the talk-radio jocks would have you believe, that
those questions about indoor plumbing, for instance, were in there so that
the government could let the alligators know — the alligators who live
in the sewer systems, that is — which houses were the easiest to break
into, so that they could...
Anyway.
When John Finneman first asked me several years ago to include a segment
on humor in my writing workshops for API, I was a little reluctant — not
because I feared the extra competition, but because I thought it might
seem just a bit self-serving. “You need more humor on your pages!”
I could thunder, and then, Groucho-like, “And I’m just the guy to give
it to you.”
Finneman persisted. You do humor writing for a living, he pointed
out. You’ve been doing it for a while now. You might have accumulated
some thoughts, or even advice, on the subject that other writers — and
even editors — might find useful.
Fair enough. So let me tell you what I’ve been telling them, at
API and elsewhere. Humor is good. Humor is your friend.
And also this: Humor is tricky. You should know what you’re
doing.
But you should do it. Definitely.
Another tool in the toolbox
Think of humor as another arrow in your quiver, another tool in the
toolbox — and a multi-bladed tool at that. Humor doesn’t have to
be laugh-out-loud funny; you can go for the grin instead of the guffaw.
It certainly doesn’t require jokes. (I know exactly one joke, and
I don’t tell it well.) Humor can be a full-tilt, full-color, full-page
production: a Palm Beach Post tribute to Sansabelt slacks, for instance.
(Try doing that one straight.) Or it can be — literally — an inch
wide but loaded with attitude: the Oregonian’s “The Edge.”
Or it can simply be a quirky turn of phrase that breathes extra life into
an already-interesting story on your metro front.
A list, a chart, a Q&A, a quiz — there’s more than one way to be
funny. Why not encourage your staff to try a few on for size?
Think of humor as a way of confounding expectations. (Not that
there’s anything wrong with expectations.) Newspapers are in The
Serious Business, but that doesn’t mean it’s the only way to travel.
In fact, going the other way from time to time has its benefits, too.
At a luncheon not long ago at the Washington Post Writers Group, I heard
an assortment of columnists — heavy hitters, every one — asked to describe
the piece they’d written lately that had received the most reader reaction.
Almost to a person, these pillars of the punditocracy mentioned something
offbeat, amusing, more than a little out of character.
I’d had precisely the same experience, as it happens, but in the opposite
direction; the strongest reader reaction I’d had in recent months was to
a serious piece. Call it the “We Didn’t Know You Had It in You” factor.
Readers — most readers, anyway — appreciate the occasional surprise.
Humor gives you a great way to make it happen.
Think of humor as another way to be serious. Strange, but true:
You can use humor to make solid, substantive points; it needn’t be an either/or
proposition. That ne’er-do-well councilman of yours? The school-board
leader who keeps ignoring your editorials’ increasingly earnest pleas for
reason? You can fulminate and bloviate and beat them over the head
with the 2-by-4 one more time. Or maybe you’ll do better with the
well-placed barb. (Have you noticed? Public officials don’t like
looking silly.) And one more thing:
Think of humor as a way of attracting new readers. There’s a reason
the airwaves and the multiplexes are filled with comedies, and the comedy
clubs are filled with eager — not to mention younger — customers.
Would you like some of these same people to spend some time with your newspaper?
You bet you would. A dose of humor can help you lure them there.
Play to your strengths
So where do we stand? With useful new options. If you’re
open to the possibilities, humor is ready and eager to serve you.
And the “humor is tricky” part? Also true — but that doesn’t mean
you shouldn’t do it. It simply means you’ll want to think through
a few of the considerations ahead of time. These, for instance:
Play to your strengths — and theirs. If you’re not Dennis Miller,
don’t try to be; forget about the rants and go with the amusing anecdotes.
But those newsroom colleagues who are always a red-hot hoot around the
water cooler? Maybe you can invite their talents onto your pages
every now and again. An editor of my acquaintance says she’s perfectly
willing to look outside her own department for funny ideas, and she has
a simple way of making those brainstorming sessions effective: “Put
creative people in a room, with food.” Chow down and lighten
up — worth trying in your shop?
“Don’t tell people what they can’t do.” Same editor, more
advice: If you want that humor brainstorm to be more than a drizzle,
resist the urge to shoot down the non-starters the moment they emerge.
There’ll be plenty of time for that later, she explains, but for right
now, you want to stay open and encouraging. You’ll get more results.
Also better results.
Somebody won’t get it
Accept the fact that somebody won’t get it. Somebody — the lady
from Peoria, the gentleman from somewhere else — just won’t get it, will
think you’re being straight when you’re not. Of course, somebody
out there also thought your last straight editorial was a joke; are you
going to stop writing those? Not a chance. You can write with
this particular person foremost in your mind; you can tailor your humor,
and everything else in your paper, to the single least-comprehending person
in your entire circulation area — but only if you’re willing to bore hundreds
and thousands of other readers to tears, and to cancellations. (“President
Clinton today called on Congress — a popularly-elected legislative body
based in Washington, D.C., the nation’s capital — to act on...”)
As tradeoffs go, let it.
But having said that...
You can give signals. If it won’t be clear from the opening lines
and the subject matter itself that this particular piece of journalism
is a few dots short of serious, you can always offer helpful hints — in
the headline, in the layout, even in the typography — that the condiment
du jour is several grains of salt.
But having said that, and as long as we’re on the subject, here’s one
last piece of advice:
Don’t give it all away. Sometimes you don’t want your humorous
intent to be clear from the opening lines. One of the great pleasures
of reading satire, for instance, is that sense of suspense (“Is this
guy serious?”), inching up to that splendid moment when it finally dawns
on you that, yes indeed, someone has been yanking your leg. The last
thing you want to do is ruin that moment for your readers, so the last
thing you want to do is cripple the piece with a slug that says:
“Satire.”
Actually, that’s only the next-to-last thing you want to do (and my
next-to-last piece of advice). The absolutely last thing you want
to do, for any kind of humor piece, is let someone steal the punch line
for the headline. It happens more often than you could possibly imagine,
and pity your poor hardworking writer when it does. An essential
part of humor is the element of surprise. But if your readers have
already met the punch line 16 inches ago — you’ll have to trust me here
— it won’t be funny anymore.
Are headline writers too lazy to think for themselves? Probably
not. They probably think they’re doing you a favor, putting the best
stuff right up top.
Make them stop.
And that’s more than enough advice for one sitting, don’t you think?
So here’s the deal in a nutshell. Funny works. Put funny to
work for you. Your readers will thank you for it. Your readers
will even read you for it.
And that’s no joke.
Horowitz is a Milwaukee-based syndicated columnist, TV commentator
and writing coach. He is a recipient of two National Headliner Awards and
three Emmy nominations.
