Last Updated: May 26, 1999
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The write stuff
Headline writer wins awards — and rightly so
By Brian Cooper
This installment of The Write Stuff focuses on headlines. In a future
issue I’ll feature leads. Please send your paper’s best today.
Doug Wagner of the Rocky Mountain News or Denver does it all. Cited
as a repeat winner of the Scripps Howard group’s monthly headline-writing
contest, Wagner crafts headlines for everything from Ann Landers columns
to cover pages. For example, over a story about an author who says he has
no choice but to write, Wagner produced:
The tale wags an author.
Here are a few other Wagner winners:
Will E. coli scare make mincemeat of the burger?
Weeds don’t have much pull with gardeners
First lady still deep in Whitewater
***
The Scripps Howard judges also liked these entries:
Docs suggest no-salt advice a bit shaky
(By Monica Krausse, El Paso (Texas) Herald-Post.)
No wiggle room in city’s dancing ban
(By Joe Tarica, San Luis Obispo (Calif.) Telegram-Tribune.)
Sports plan draws field of screams
(By Richard Chapman, Rocky Mountain News, on a proposed athletic field.)
***
Annette Price, The Daily Oklahoman, Oklahoma City, wrote this headline
for a front-page story on the boll weevil and the insect’s devastating
impact on cotton crops:
Cotton-pickin’ weevil evil, farmers say
***
This full-page-width headline captured a frustrating turn of events
in the Mideast:
Ross leaves, Israel acts, Arafat balks, Netanyahu shrugs, peace waits
(By Joe Sevick, St. Paul (Minn.) Pioneer Press.)
***
Dean Miller, executive editor of the Post Register of Idaho Falls, Idaho,
admits his trepidation while approving this headline by Paul Johnson, now
assistant city editor. Over an advance for a local Rocky Mountain Oyster
feed — an event that features, well, a lot of bull — Johnson wrote:
Nut crackers
Unique spring ritual invites you to put your taste buds to the testes
"But we got nary a call," Miller said.
***
Royal flush
Kitty Kelly’s book ties Windsors in knot
(By Mike Lonsford, Houston Chronicle, on the tell-all biographer’s book
on the royal family.)
***
Don’t flush your staff’s good work. Send their work to The Write Stuff.
Cooper is executive editor of the Telegraph Herald, Dubuque, Iowa.
Contact him at P.O. Box 688, Dubuque, IA 52004-0688 or bcooper@wcinet.com
