Re: Much too easy...
> FYI It's pretty standard in the news business..., for headlines, subheads, and the like *not* to be written by the article's author. That was certainly the case .....in the 90s. .... It's not just an El Reg thing.
It was that way when I learned newspapering at my mother's knee. Late 1960s. At the end of the linotype era, early photo-type and hot-wax layout. Mom roughed-out the final layout and declared the headlines. Often to fit the space on the page. Or not to have two too-similar headlines in the same day, or same page. Stories arrived with short 1 or 2 word tags so editors and writers could say "Where's the dam story?" or "Here's the dam story!" or "Put the dam story on page 13!". The Continued On Page 46 might be "Dam", but for the top of the story she'd write something interesting like "Ruckus at Dam Meeting". Yes, if a writer had 'a great idea' it could be penciled on the copy or proposed verbally over the desk. But it was Mom's job.
This seemed to be how she was taught circa 1951. And journalism in 1951 was already mature and stodgy.
BTW: in hot-wax layout the titles and the articles were separate slips of treated paper. I know, because I was with her final-checking the layouts before they were shot onto film for making the plates. I noted that this article went with that headline and that with this. Pointed it out and there was a minor crisis of peeling the heads off, hotting-up the wax dispenser, waxing and carefully checking alignment (at this point she let the professional layer do the fussywork).
Biting the hand that feeds IT
