Key. An important word for unlocking power. Without a key we could be stranded. A good friend learned that recently. He pulled the door shut and left for work. In his pocket, he carried a green pouch that he thought contained the key to the front door. Only, in his apartment there were two green pouches, with different keys. It took a call to the local locksmith — a mobile operator (mobile as in moving around from place to place) — and this man was able to (in a matter of minutes, I was told) provide him with a brand new key (for a suitable fee.)
Keys. A word not merely relegated to opening doors. Maps have keys. One doesn’t see an atlas too often these days, but the key in the corner of several maps in an atlas provides a wealth of information. Once it was possible to read the key on a map, the map itself became more than just a pretty coloured picture. Distances between towns could be calculated, elevations could be worked out, one could discern where a railway existed or a roadway, or important institutions such as hospitals. Newspapers have keys. Everybody who has used them to wrap the next day’s fish knows that.
Everybody knows, too, that before we get to the fish, we first have the bait. The key, in other words. Although, with a newspaper, we rarely think of it as a key. Yet, a key it is. I’m referring, of course, to the headline. The lurer, winking: “Come on in, take a peek. You might end up staying longer.” If the headline doesn’t grab the reader, don’t expect the rest of the article to do its job. It’s a bit like asking Bhuvaneshwar Kumar and Mohammad Sami to consistently provide a solid tenth-wicket partnership in cricket when India’s openers, (the keys, in other words,) have failed. What does a headline do? It summarises an article and draws the reader in.
If it is clever, so much the better. A real good one I recall was printed one December 21 in the Mirror, I think. “Happy Christmas ... Warne is Over ...” it proclaimed. Of course, it was leading up to the news of Australian spinner Shane Warne’s retirement. “France set to smash B.O. records” screamed another wickedly clever headline. Doubtless it had nothing to do with body odour and everything to do with the box office. Yet another, “Hungry Swedes queue up for Obamas sausage,” you guessed rightly was about this small food cart, Obamas, behind a shopping centre in Sweden.
Having worked a long time (nearly a decade) with a terrific newspaper, I am always on the lookout for a quality headline. Holidaying now in India, I have been lucky to come across not one but three, all of them on sport. The first, on the recently concluded World Cup match where The Netherlands blew chances in a penalty shootout. “Flopwork Orange,” read the glorious headline. The other two concerned India’s abysmal cricket Test match performance in England. In one, where six batsmen managed to get out for zero, the headline exclaimed angrily: “What the duck!” And finally, when fans had seen the umpteenth catch being put down by butterfingered slip fielders, the headline baptised the bunch: ‘India’s Sleep Cordon’.
Sadly, however, those are about the only three I’ve managed to cull. For the rest, headline writing here is, in one word, disastrous. In another word, dull. In one phrase: “Don’t give a duck!” Especially for overseas visitors. Headlines are more cryptic than the articles they lead in to. Sometimes, with so many acronyms, the headline itself needs a key.
For example, “SkillMin merged with sports, youth affairs; gets ITIs, NSDC,” opens no doors for me, I’m afraid. Neither does, “Government explores CAS option against IOC, IAAF”. Another dead line, as far as I’m concerned, not a headline. Not a key, but something more lethal. A dagger, whose only point is to kill the article.
Kevin Martin is a journalist based in Sydney, Australia.
