Whoever’s responsible for the headlines in the Ulster Star, they seem to know how to write them.
‘Hilden Mill gutted in ferocious blaze’ read the splash on Friday 13 March, with ‘Tributes paid to Lord Molyneaux’ as the second lead.
This short, succinct and active style continued into the copy, with the main story’s first par reading: ‘One of Lisburn’s most historic buildings was gutted on Sunday night when fire swept through the Barbour Threads Mill at Hilden.
Wherever you looked on page one, you were met with the same type of crystal clear entry points: ‘Jenny Palmer: Show of support as councillor faces disciplinary action’; ‘Schools’ Cup: Wallace men aim to make history’; and ‘It’s time to get voting – Chip Shop of the Year 2015’.
The same care seemed to be devoted to most stories on inside pages, with the best headlines – and punchy, interesting stories – including:
- ‘Fees hike just isn’t cricket for Derriaghey club’ leading page five;
- ‘Woman denies the murder of her child’ leading page seven;
- ‘From frumpy to yummy mummy for Miriam’ leading page 11;
- ‘Beauties flock to Lisburn heat of Miss Northern Ireland contest’ leading page 23; and
- ‘Meet Wallace High’s cup final hopefuls’ leading the picture spread on 27 players on pages 32 and 33.
Leaving readers in little doubt about what they are about to read is always a good idea, although too many local papers tend to tie themselves up in stale headlines.
The Star is a Johnston Press title, and the group should nurture the skills of the wordsmith praised above, for both print and web, as his or her work is also hitting SEO criteria on most occasions.
Perhaps it’s all got something to do with Damian Wilson, listed on page two and on the lisburntoday.co.uk website as the title’s ‘Multi-Media Content Editor’ – although I think plain ‘editor’ without any initial capitals would read better.
The Star’s price, however, seems too high for the page and story-count: £1.40 to casual readers for a 64-page book containing around 160 stories on 52 editorial pages.
Indeed, my contact in Lisburn who sent me the paper commented that it was “a mere shell of the thick weekly that was in the house when I was young”.
But given the Star only sells around 5,000 copies a week (5,668 when it was last audited in 2012) at least its quality has been maintained, if not its volume.
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Gosh, Steve’s easy to impress. Any half-decent sub could have written the splash headline, though some might argue that being overspecific with the location actually reduces its power – OK for SEO, but doesn’t the Star write different heads for the web anyway? – and the Molyneaux one is hung on the same worn-out ‘tributes paid’ cliché we always use when someone dies, for lack of a better idiom. The third line’s dreadfully shy; the verb ‘are’ in the second line would have turned the ‘to’ to the third and helped fill the yawning gap. The work of half a second, if anyone could have been bothered, and just the sort of sloppiness Steve would normally fasten on in his more astringent moods. Praise where it’s due, please.
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Ferocious? Really?
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A takeaway coffee from my local SPAR shop costs £2.10. Are we underwriting local papers if we think we need to sell them for less than half the cost of a coffee to go?
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Sorry – underwriting should read underpricing – blame the predictive…..
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Surprised that you like the headlines. All pretty run of the mill, local newspaper fare. I would never have got away with the “tributes paid” one on the front page, dreadful shape. I suppose the best that can be said about the lead headline is that it has no spelling errors and it fits. Observer’s right about “ferocious”. And as an old sub once told me “fish are gutted, not houses”. But, hey, who am I to talk? The headlines I’m about to write tonight could be my worst yet…
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Are papers still running “tributes have been paid….” Headings and intros every time they do a death story.. Such a lazy cliche!
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An editor I once worked with (when let loose on pages) routinely used the heading ‘Tributes pour in for …’ even if there was only one tribute. OK, he was prepared to get his hands dirty and sub the odd page but Cliches ‘R’ Us will be inscribed on his tombstone.
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Wordsmith. How about “Thousands flocked to…..” Yes you DO still see it.
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I was always told to use ‘razed’ rather than ‘gutted’ when describing a house or factory fire. Yet I’ve never met a single person who would use the word ‘razed’ in everyday speech. It was one of those rules that was absolute ‘b……s’ – something for the subs to moan about.
The word ‘ferocious’ seems superfluous here. Blazes tend not to be gentle, laid back or apologetic. They just devour everything in front of them.
My main gripe with this page is that – like so many others – the ads and promos kill it before it gets off the ground. With a really good pic and more space, the lead could have been dramatic and eye-catching. As it stands, it looks cramped and uninspiring.
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Sometimes simple is better, less is more. As a hack who started out in Northern Ireland, on papers where reporters wrote the headlines, I reckon whoever put this front page together knows their audience. I’m not saying Ulster folk are simple, far from it – they just like the facts without the flowers. Steve Dyson has got it right.
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I have been critical of Steve’s reviews in the past and this one, thankfully, gives a nod to the digital side of the business too. Simple and to the point, just like the headlines he praises.
Steerpike, if you believe that tweaking the ‘are’ and ‘to’ because the third line is a little ‘shy’, makes any difference to the quality or, more importantly, the sales of this paper you need to wake up.
This nonsense is the exact reason why subs are no longer required and, believe me, being a former chief sub, I find that difficult to say.
As subs, we were paid to add value and teach. This sort of ‘advice’ is something which you’d say quietly over the shoulder of a junior sub whereas, on a comment board, you just come across as overly pedantic. That’s been the general perception of subs over the last few years and one of the main causes of their demise!
If you don’t add value or teach, you won’t be around for long!
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It’s good to see a JP newspaper receiving praise, even though the firm is doing its best to end the age of print. But think well of it, everyone. Ashley’s newsroom of the future is imminent and that will speed the age of destruction for your over-priced publications.
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I disagree Oliver, I think it’s attention to that type of detail that helps to keep a newspaper’s standards.
I’m not a sub, but I’d go further.
The picture caption is pretty weak and could be extended with some detail about the fire to entice readers, rather than just stating the obvious.
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On a general point, what is the point of captions on some stories (like this one) – apart from following a silly style rule?
The splash says there’s a ‘ferocious’ fire at t’ mill and a picture of the mill being hosed down (where are the flames, by the way?). It doesn’t need a caption to connect the two!
You sometimes see a picture of a hospital with a sign in the foreground saying Ourgate Hospital – and a caption underneath saying Ourgate Hospital. Drives me mad.
Likewise, a scene-setting picture with name of the street in the image… and the name of the street in the caption. Bloody daft!
I could go in…
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Oliver (sigh), my point, which I thought was pretty obvious, was that it’s absurd to lavish praise on a front page that clumsily ignores a basic, long-standing rule of design, whether or not you think those rules are relevant, which I’m guessing you don’t, since you’re always reminding us that newspapers are dead, from which I conclude that your ideal headline is optimised for search engines and thus, in my experience, about 35 words long and including a name and address. You’re comparing apples and oranges. Newspaper headlines have to be crafted to fit a space; web headlines are all the facts in the story, in no particular order. BTW, I’ve been a sub for 25 years, on and off, and I’d happily both teach and add value if anyone would let me these days.
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At least it wasn’t a footballer gutted. That would have been a tragic waste of a long-exhausted cliche.
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Re Steve’s last par. It should be sells only not only sells – and this man is a former editor. The misplaced only seems to be a common mistake these days in print and broadcast media – certainly here in Oz.
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steerpike. Need to review first sentence. Too long. Very, very poor
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steerpike, I understand your desire to keep with the long-standing tradition of well-crafted headline, but just to ‘fit a space’? No, those days are gone.
This is my point about how many journalists view subs as being pedantic. A headline which ‘fits’ doesn’t sell papers, whereas a well-written one, which doesn’t fit, might.
A sub can add great value to a story by making it more concise, by keeping the language, tone and tense consistent or by opting to design the page around the headline or the picture.
The pressures created by changes in the modern newsroom have turned this skill into little more than a proof-reading exercise and arguing about grammatical issues which the general public really couldn’t care less about. More to the point, it doesn’t sell papers!
I realised this years ago and was lucky enough to find my own niche on the digital side. Despite my focus now, no, I don’t think newspapers are dead. I think the attitude and model needs to shift, particularly within editorial, so that journalists don’t get bogged down with trivial issues, such as a headline not quite fitting or writing to ‘fill web space’, and concentrate on presenting the most appropriate, engaging stories to the communities they serve. Most importantly, on the platform they want to read them!
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And there was me thinking that subs were/are journalists. Just because young, straight-out-of-university reporters are now given the tools to pull a page together, doesn’t mean that subs, or ‘long-standing traditions’, are no longer needed. And being something of pedant was one of the reasons people became subs, not just to make page design smooth and aestethically pleasing, but to also ensure that stories were accurate, legal and grammatically accurate. The skills of these people ensured the quality of papers for decades, and to ignore them in the brave (but not quite so new) world of digital journalism is a mistake. To say that paying attention to small details is one of the reasons why subs are now like dinosaurs, is ridiculous and I would suggest is music to the ears of the execs at JP – who sacked them all because they ran out of money and sense, not because they decided they were a bunch of geeks that stifled the talents of ‘real’ journalists and the enjoyment of the readers.
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