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I'm old enough to remember when newspaper front pages were put together by newsmen who had no design training. They simply wanted to spotlight what they believed were the most interesting stories of the day. Their wasn't much rhyme or reason to their pages, heavy on type, light on illustrations, and there came a time publishers decided these front page were too cluttered and ugly. Enter the designers. One result was a great reduction in the number of stories on page one. Find a front page from way back when and you might see 16 stories or more, most of them one or two paragraph items. What they had in common was timeliness. And if these front pages were indeed ugly, they were much more interesting than those produced A. D. (after designers). I knew newspapers were in trouble even before the Internet came along. It was when I first heard the word "centerpiece," the dominant front page story selected days before it was actually published. The "centerpiece" was well-illustrated and took up a lot of space. Often it was about as interesting as an instruction manual and as timely as yesterday's weather forecast, Most newspaper front pages now have no more than four stories, which is why they've been so easy to overlook for the past 30 years. On the other hand, newspaper websites have unlimited space and present a dizzying array of headlines on their home pages, a flashback to the days of yore and beyond. Unfortunately, folks who tend newspaper websites don't know when to quit or how to organize. Often the same story is promoted three times or more on the same day. Sometimes you'll be greeted with an advance story on an event that took place two days ago. I visit at least five newspaper websites every day. Additionally, I receive emails via AOL, which surprises some folks who claim they didn't realize the web pioneer (formerly known as America Online) still existed. In any event, the AOL home page is devoted to "news," selected from a variety of sources, including USA Today, People magazine, Fox News, and the Associated Press. MIND YOU, I am 87 years old, so I view the world differently than most people, but what passes for news these days is mind-boggling, at least, if you get your news online. This week I was stunned to find this on the New York Times website, nytimes.com:
I figure Ms. Cyrus must have some project she wants to plug. That's usually the reason certain "celebrities" suddenly reappear in the media. I was surprised Ms. Cyrus crashed the New York Time, but merely shrugged when I noticed this InStyle item on aol.com:
In a more sensible era, the only way you'd see anything in print about Miley Cyrus is by looking through a drug store magazine rack. But websites use the shotgun approach in hopes readers will find something — anything — that will lead them to a page where the story is interrupted every two paragraphs by an advertisement. AT ONE TIME I enjoyed looking through People magazine, usually while getting a haircut, because I enjoyed looking at photos of celebrities. But by the time Covid hit in 2020, and magazines disappeared from waiting rooms, I no longer recognized more than a third of the "celebrities" featured, so I did not miss People or similar publications. Now, just five years later, I probably would recognize less than 20 percent of People's people. Which is why the following item on aol.com, picked up from InStyle magazine, meant nothing to me:
Brie Larson's name didn't immediately register with me, even though she's an Academy Award-winning actress. She just hasn't appeared in a film that appealed to me. Which gets me to a recent headline from the Washington Post website, washingtonpost.com, when the newspaper invited readers to learn its picks for:
I can't imagine anyone anticipating more than five films for the entire year. Most movies are rehashes of movies made a couple of years earlier. I figure by the time a person turns 20, he or she is familiar every possible movie plot. (Things are so bad that some reviewers now rate the choreography of fight scenes. Soon some "action" film standbys will be treated like figure skating competition — reviewers will count the number of times vehicles flip during accidents and explosions. Anything less than a quadruple flip will be considered a failure.) DECADES AGO, newspapers did not give front page coverage to items fed them by performers' agents or publicists. These items went to columnists or entertainment writers who often boiled them down to a sentence or two that appeared deep inside the publication. Today everything is fair game, and that's why the Los Angeles Times website, latimes.com, promised to reveal something that, I'm sure, hadn't occurred to any of its readers:
Of equal interest, no doubt, was this aol.com headline that came courtesy of People magazine:
On syracuse.com, the online tool of the Syracuse Post-Standard, was this headline:
It was on AOL that I noticed this very resistible tidbit:
Meanwhile, usatoday.com revealed something all of us wanted to know:
I haven't the words to describe how interested I was in this juicy item from syracuse.com:
Imagine my surprise and intense interest when this Los Angeles Times story made its way to islandpacket.com, website for my local newspaper:
You guessed it. I had never heard of either one of them. THEN THERE are things you don't want to see or even think about, but some media website will present them anyway. Months ago there was this:
Many online sites recently headlined a People magazine item about Jenny McCarthy's bowel movements, saying that before she changed her diet, she pooped every 14 days. One rather strange headline on nytimes.com actually was an an indication of changing times in the world of sports:
Apparently, it's possible for athletes in high school (and even younger) to cash in on NIL, which has changed the face of college athletics. That is, they can profit from the use of their name, image, and likeness in commercials or other projects. I think back on my high school days when the star of our basketball team was Gus Castellini, who averaged an incredible 38 points per game in his senior season. I picture a TV commercial of Gus in his uniform, munching on a strip of a familiar food, telling the audience, "After every game, I treat myself to Twin Trees pizza ." WHAT REALLY interests me are the headlines, such as this one I saw on syracuse.com:
The actress in question is Ellen Pompeo, who, in my opinion, is not famous, which is probably why the headline didn't use her name, which probably wouldn't have attracted many readers. One of the most annoying habits — and this goes way back — is how the media misrepresents many performers. The classic example appeared online about five years ago under the headline:
This was in reference to character actor Nehemiah Persoff who appeared in exactly one episode of "Gilligan's Island" during a long career that included an unforgettable role in the movie classic, "Some Like It Hot." Persoff died in 2022 at the age of 102. Recently there was this headline:
The actress was Valerie Mahaffey and she had made only one appearance on "Seinfeld." She was much better remembered for her work in "Dead to Me," "Northern Exposure" and "ER." ONLINE NEWS outlets are very big on helpful hints. This week, for example, I noticed these headlines:
I've seen this item on other newspaper home pages, most recently on providencejournal.com:
Picture that on the front page of a real newspaper. THERE ALSO are tips on ways to waste your time:
And I found this warning on washingtonpost.com:
This advice came from the nytimes.com:
I got a special kick out of this item on usatoday.com:
Seriously, the best things you can do at these places is look at the sky and make s'mores? Then my backyard qualifies as a family resort. NEWSPAPER websites also are very big on telling readers what they must see, must watch and must do, some even saying these things must be done do before you die. Some events, particular in sports, prompt websites to offer "takeaways" afterward, usually a short list of obvious observations that are irrelevant almost immediately. And there are far too many stories and columns that promise to tell us what might happen if ... Certain words become popular until they die of overuse. Unfortunately, "bombshell" continues to hang on, so does "icon," though my current favorite is "beloved," as in "Beloved restaurant goes out of business," which may qualify as an oxymoron. Chances are the person who wrote the headline is unfamiliar with the concept, or this is simply a typical example of what has happened since copy editors disappeared from most newsrooms. |
Several days after this piece was written, I went through news sites to look for new headlines that probably were of interest to no one. My favorites:
No, that isn't a reference to actor James Woods, but to a young outfielder for the Washington Nationals, and it addresses a burning question: Why would anyone care about a home run derby?
The sitcom ended its long run in 1972. That's 53 years ago. We can assume what happened to the adults in the cast. And then there was the last one, in USA Today, where some editors apparently are still shocked by the word "fuck" and think it's newsworthy when certain people say it.
Anyone who employs "F bomb" reminds me of a four-year-old who points a finger and shouts, "I heard what you said!" I'm no fan of President Trump, but I'd say his reaction in this situation was understandable, so he used a word we routinely hear in movies and some television shows. It might have been more interesting if Trump had refrained from saying it. |
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