The phones were ringing off the hook in Leslie Noll’s office one day last month — no great surprise since Noll is volunteer coordinator for a telephone hotline that fields inquiries about health insurance benefits.
So much interest might be welcomed as an affirmation of the program, an arm of the state Insurance Commissioner’s office. In this case it was an annoyance.
Callers were confused, frustrated and in some instances angry. A headline in the Jan. 8 Spokesman-Review had told them: “Medigap offers managed care plan.”
The story that followed said just the opposite. In fact, Medicare clients in Eastern Washington have no access to managed care plans.
The erroneous headline raised hopes. The impression it left was the lasting one in the minds of senior citizens who read it.
“This,” said Noll in an e-mail to The Spokesman-Review, “resulted in unnecessary calls to our 800 line and is extremely frustrating to all concerned.”
Unfortunately, misleading or incorrect headlines happen at times. Their initial impact is hard to overcome, even when the story is accurate.
The headline over a column on the Opinion page on Dec. 30, for example, referred to “free trade.” The column was about “fair trade,” a substantially different concept.
On the same day, a year-end roundup of the news of 2001 appeared on the front page. A subhead on the story read: “Terrorism attacks rattled region more than earthquakes, drought.”
The story itself, however, stated that no attempt was being made to rank the top news events of the year.
How hard can it be to write a headline? Find out for yourself.
Printed below is a news story that recently moved on the Associated Press wire. Pretend you’re a copy editor, the person who edits the story and writes the headline before it goes in the paper.
Here are the basic rules you’d have to follow:
- Make the headline two lines long. Each line must have 25 to 27 characters, no more and no less. (Every letter, numeral, punctuation mark or space is a character.)
- Heads should be written in the active rather than passive voice. (“Man bites dog” rather than “Dog bitten by man.”)
- Don’t split up verb forms (“has ordered,”) or prepositional phrases (“in Montana”) between lines.
- Capture the essence of the story but don’t repeat its lead word for word.
- You have about 20 minutes to read the story, do any necessary editing and then write the headline.
Here’s your story:
BOZEMAN, Mont. (AP) — Complete cleanup of the New World Mine site near Cooke City will take until 2006, the lead contractor says.
Considerable cleanup construction took place on the site last summer, Mike Cormier of Maxim Technologies said during a hearing this week.
But there are at least 430,000 cubic yards of mine waste in at least 150 dumps in the mining district, he say. That is on top of more than 20 mines discharging water, acid seeps and long stretches of streams all ready harmed by the discharge.
New World was one of the most controversial mining proposals in the nation, perched upstream from Yellowstone National Park and at the headwaters of three rivers.
The historic mining district contains hundreds of millions of dollars worth of gold and other minerals along with huge amounts of acidic rock. Opponents feared disturbing that rock would lead to torrents of pollution in the rivers or the park and, after years of debate and lawsuits, the federal government in 1996 bought out the interests of Crown Butte Mines, terminating the project.
Part of the $65 million buyout included setting aside $22.5 million for cleanup of pollution from sporadic mining operations over the previous century.
Cormier said their is enough money to finish the job. Federal and private experts began work on the site in 1999.
Among cleanup options are burying waste on site and hauling it away. There are also a number of alternatives for plugging leaky mines.
Maxim engineer Allan Kirk was chief spokesman for Crown Butte and the man who mapped out the ore body. Now he is applying his skills to closing and cleaning up some of the old mines.
Don Bachman of the Greater Yellowstone Coalition called Kirk a problem solver who brings extra energy to the project.
“I’m pretty pleased with the way things are going,” Bachman said.
Ombudsman’s note: Send your work to me at 999 W. Riverside Ave., Spokane WA 99201. I’ll ask the copy editors to judge the submissions and we’ll identify the winner in a future column. There may even be a modest prize.
