Week 12

            Headlines are not my niche! That is what I have learned this week. A creative and concise mind is needed to develop headlines that stick out to readers. When I write, I tend to elaborate a lot on what I want to say. The supplemental reading stated, “the person who is a whiz at one form [of writing] is not automatically proficient at the other.” I have been learning a lot of tips and tricks when it comes to writing headlines that create concise, bold, yet informational to draw in readers. Little things such as a comma taking place of the word “and,” or a semi-colon taking place of a period.  What I found the most frustrating is creating a headline that did not exceed the width of the column. I felt I was using bold words, yet those words exceeded the number of characters required. The reading talked about the benefit of computers in that case. Squeezing a longer headline is doable, when in papers, it isn’t. It also talked about first efforts, and that the headlines created are usually too long. It’s advice? “Keep eliminating words and substituting others until the head fits, or change the focus entirely.” I am learning that the point of journalism is to make things simple. Yet, that is a complex process! Another important thing I learned is accuracy. I found myself coming up with catchy headlines, yet they didn’t accurately portray the story. Headlines tend to be misleading if you don’t show accurately what occurred or how the reader will be affected.