The Importance of Earnest Service

A clever headline is memorable and if it doesn’t lead you into a story, it will make you smile or think twice. What fun it would be to write headlines for a living!

The New York Post is the winner in this list of my favorites and those of friends/followers of this blog.

Editor and writer Jim Roper’s choice is “Headless Body in Topless Bar,” which, I learned, is the title of a book of headlines by New York Post staff. Other juicy ones in the book:

           Lady is a Trump

           Axis of Weasel

           Holy Shiite

Recently this paper reported on yet another NJ political scandal that also involved some rabbis. The headline: “Kosher Nostra.” “Tiger Tamed,” a front pager, announced Y E Yang’s winning the PGA in August in an upset over Tiger Woods. And “Ex-con-stitutional” was how the paper drew you into news of a research center run by ex convicts.

PR colleague Sharon Clancy Lienau shared “Ears Pierced While You Wait.” [This reminded me not of a headline, but of a greasy spoon on the upper west side of Manhattan called "Eat and Run."]

Beautyblitz.com founder and editor, Polly Blitzer, wrote an article for Family Circle which she called, “Take 2 and call me in the morgue.” She covered the TV ads that claim to cure you of an ailment and simultaneously warn you of astronomical potential side effects.

Bambe Levine, Bambe Levine public relations remembers “Ford to City Drop Dead.” The New York Daily News  ran it in 1974 when the President refused to bail out the city.  

If you know some poignant or memorable headlines, please share!