“Messi is old, short and slow. How is he still dominating at the World Cup?”
This is the headline to a recent piece from The Conversation website, the tagline of which is “Academic Rigor, Journalistic Flair.”
In these digital days, an introductory line or extended subhead is often the new headline. Full sentences and periods can be used.
“If you ever had a kid play competitive soccer in the U.S., you already know why we aren’t better at it.”
That’s one article currently at Slate.com, perhaps the best-known subscription-based news magazine not linked to a preexisting print or electronic outlet. They’ve been long trying to perfect the art of the lure.
In the case of the soccer parent Evan McGarvey’s essay, they aim to pique your curiosity about what he has to say, but also hope you’ll stay for other interesting, well-written perspectives on stories in the news.
If you already have a subscription, or maybe did have, then an outlet tries to ensure that you don’t miss something that you’d really like to read. In that regard, the Washington Post sent out a “Politics Alert” email on Monday entitled, “A polygamist religious sect’s alleged misdeeds are at the heart of an old fight getting attention in a Republican race.”
Slate, incidentally, have updated an old reliable, advice/agony-aunt columns, with the usual concerns — relationships, sex, parenting, trouble with the in-laws or the neighbors, issues of ethics or the proper etiquette in various situations, and so on. Here are a few in that category.
“These Remnants of My Childhood Are Precious to Me. I Don’t Like What My Sister Wants Me to Do With Them.”
“Help! My Sister-in-Law Has Latched Onto Our Healthy Hobby. Her Expectations of Us Are Outrageous.”
“My Husband Wants to Do Something Snobby and Expensive. The Idea Makes Me Cringe.”
What exactly are they talking about and what is the advice being given, and, of course, would you agree with that advice?
There is almost a soap-opera hook — you want to know what happens next.
This is a long way from the era when tabloids had to have sharp elbows in the battle for attention on the newsstands. There was “Ford to City: Drop Dead” in the Daily News in 1975.
In 1983, the New York Post had a story that one editor thought was “too raunchy” for the front page, but several others argued its headline was far too good to bury on Page 17: “Headless Body in Topless Bar.” Almost as famous is one from another Murdoch title, the Sun in London, “Freddie Starr Ate My Hamster.” The comedian Starr was not happy with that story, it being a complete fabrication on the part of his publicist, who never felt any need to apologize for it, claiming it greatly boosted his client’s career.
The Sun also brought us in the 1980s “Gotcha!” referring to the sinking of the “Belgrano” during the Falklands War, and “70,000 Red Tots Perish” (i.e., Soviet communist babies and small children) after the Chernobyl disaster became public in the West.
A headline can be irresponsible, entertaining, callous, enticing, funny or whatever you want. A great majority are none of those, but we judge them usually on whether they do the job efficiently and with precision.
Sometimes, though, the headline fails the story. Take the BBC website’s report on a Round of 32 game on June 30, which began, “Mexico cruised into the last 16 of the World Cup with a comfortable victory over Ecuador in a weather-delayed contest at the Azteca Stadium.” Neutrals who are football fans were pleased to see Raul Jimenez score the second goal in the 2-0 game. He fractured his skull when playing for Wolves (a club he’s recently rejoined) in a Premier League game in the first year of Covid — and so the fact that his career is flourishing six years on at age 35 is a welcome story.
Jimenez’s goal was in the 32nd minute and Mexico, as indicated, cruised thereafter. The perfectly fine report, which was 400 words or so in length, ended with a brief reference to the ejection in added time (90th minute + 5) of an Ecuadorian player for speaking to an opponent with his mouth covered. Alas, there’s something about a red card that prompts copy editors to feel the need to get “10-man” into the headline and here we had the Mexicans defeating “10-man Ecuador,” which was an absurd summation of the proceedings.
BBC’s is a fine website (one increasingly going behind a paywall) and so is RTE’s, still free and a good resource for the Irish diaspora. But, I have to take issue also with one of the latter’s World Cup headlines, via a Press Association story: “Norway boss says overhead wire deserves an assist for England goal.”
The report says, “The ball appeared to hit one of the overhead TV cables [before falling to England goal-scorer Jude Bellingham], but FIFA says the chip in the ball did not record anything.”
It added, “[Stale] Solbakken was asked at the start of the post-match press conference whether the camera wire deserved an assist for the leveler, with the Norway boss saying: ‘Yeah, it probably will.
“'That was unlucky for us. The ball fell straight down from the sky, so it changed its direction.’”
So, the manager was fed the line and in any case qualified it with “probably.” The journalist got his soundbite; RTE or PA, if it wasn’t their reporter, should not have gone along with it.
And another World Cup story: this one wasn’t at all inaccurate, but is notable because something really interesting got buried at the end. It’s from the Guardian of last Thursday after the semifinal defeat to Argentina: “Four passes in 19 minutes: damning numbers behind England’s collapse.” Further down, there’s a table with the heading: “England performed best when Bukayo Saka played, yet he didn't feature against Argentina.”
The writer argues, “the goal difference across the tournament was +6 from 6.3 matches, or +0.82 per 90 minutes played. It’s interesting how it fluctuated with different players on the pitch, as wary as we must be of reading too much into small samples for individuals in team sports. The goal difference was +2.01 per 90 when Bukayo Saka was playing…”
And what happened in the bronze-medal game on Saturday against France? The Arsenal winger played the entire game, scored three, and his team won 6-4, i.e., by a goal difference of +2!
Overall, the World Cup was fantastic. We had to get over our disappointments — for example, France, the most exciting and most talented team, in my opinion, failed to show up in the semifinal against Spain. At least, after going in 4-0 down at halftime in the bronze game, they bounced back to put on a real exhibition in the second half, and captain Kylian Mbappe reached the 10-goal tournament high.
Most of the world was relieved Sunday at Ferran Torres’s goal, and the New York Times’ the Athletic FC gave expression to that early on Monday morning not with a sentence headline, but with a simple, “Spain Reign, Argentina Disgraced.”
