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cimoreneI forgot to post when, a couple of weeks ago, our local1 paper reached New Lows in Headline-Writing, which is saying quite a bit for the worst source of headlines I have ever seen, with the following lead front-page headline:
Suicide among youth upsetting
(Självmord bland unga oroar)
O RLY? You don't say.
You might think this is the opposite of a human interest story and skip the whole thing, which would presumably be presenting the results of some sort of study, from the headline. But in fact, the headline is worse than it looks at first glance because it doesn't actually convey what the article is about. In fact, it was concerned with current events - a few particular recent teen suicides in Finland.
1. Hufvudstadsbladet is the main Finland-wide Swedish-language newspaper, so most of the "local" news is concerned with the Helsinki area. However, the total Swedish-speaking population of the country is in the 200 000 s, so "local" is still rather accurate. Swedish Finns themselves call their community "the duck pond" (the Finns are the surrounding pigeons)(Hufvudstadsbladet had a pretty brilliant series of billboards a few years ago with a little yellow rubber duck in the middle of a crowd of grey pigeons with a voice bubble saying "Is there anybody here who speaks Swedish?").
(Självmord bland unga oroar)
O RLY? You don't say.
You might think this is the opposite of a human interest story and skip the whole thing, which would presumably be presenting the results of some sort of study, from the headline. But in fact, the headline is worse than it looks at first glance because it doesn't actually convey what the article is about. In fact, it was concerned with current events - a few particular recent teen suicides in Finland.
1. Hufvudstadsbladet is the main Finland-wide Swedish-language newspaper, so most of the "local" news is concerned with the Helsinki area. However, the total Swedish-speaking population of the country is in the 200 000 s, so "local" is still rather accurate. Swedish Finns themselves call their community "the duck pond" (the Finns are the surrounding pigeons)(Hufvudstadsbladet had a pretty brilliant series of billboards a few years ago with a little yellow rubber duck in the middle of a crowd of grey pigeons with a voice bubble saying "Is there anybody here who speaks Swedish?").
