Furness Model Railway Club is back on track

(kim)

"Dragon Heart" wrote

Can the modern media not write a headline or an article without using tired clichés?

John.

I think they must give these types of story to the office junior and to them the clich=E9s are not old.

"Furness Model Railway Club is back on track" and "Plans to evict a model railway club from its home have hit the buffers" Can anyone suggest alternatives ?

"Dragon Heart" wrote

Maybe one of the reasons that people have tired of newspapers and why their circulation is continually in decline?

John.

ok - ...... (tounge in cheek)..

"Furness Model Railway Club sensationaly re-railed" Furness council has sensationaly put a model railway club back on track after being deluged with three letters in a storm of protest. Mr Perrigrine Flatergast, out shopping with his wife outside your insiteful, caring newspaper offices, summed up the feeling of many when he declared "What model railway club?". If his bus hadn't arrived it is certain he would said he would be leading a protest march by 10's of people on the council offices (parking permitting) to demand action from the council over this issue. It is belived that Mrs. Flatergast almost said she would be providing a nice cup of tea and a bun. Feelings are running high in Furness, with the issue likely to determine the outcome of next General election. A senior council official, or at least a bloke that looked a bit like him, was overheard outside the Dog & Duck at midnight saying "Every steet should have a model railway club, hic, it's our *right*, hic." just before the ambulance arrived.

and

"Closure notice on model railway club premises have hit the blocks" Your glorious civic leaders have most generously fought off non-existent bids to take over a model raliway club's premises by the Council funded Gay Lesbian Single Partent Imigrant Workers Co-oprative (Wooden Leg Branch). Council Leader Dalaney Flanktupe, who as you all know never makes mistakes and only does the job as cares so much about the comunity he doesn't live in, is quoted as saying "It's nothing to do with fact that there is no other concievable use for the building so it would have just become a drain on council funds, we've done it purely out of the generosity of our hearts - arn't we nice?". Or he would have done were he not in Tagiers on an expenses-paid trip to examine twinning with Morocco."

soon to be followed, in a couple of months by

"Engineering work over-run causes slipping at Model Railway Club - Council blames 'worng type of building'"

Cheers Richard

Judging from the headlines that are used whenever Hornby announce their financial results, the answer is no. If I have to read one more that uses the phrase "on track" or "steaming ahead"....

Fred X

It's a long-standing tradition among headline writers who want to get the maximum impact in the minimum number of words. Even our local paper does it.

"MartinS" wrote

Maybe, but it just shows a total lack of originality - in other words it's repetitive and boring.

John.

In the context of the newspaer itself, that's fine. One of the problems with putting copies of newspaper reports online is that headlines don't work the same way online as they do in print.

In the printed newspaper, the headline is never seen separately from the article it refers to - it's never used as a title in an index or list of articles, for example - and it's always seen in the context of just that newspaper itself. So the headline is literally that - a "head" line that starts the article off with an eye-grabbing introduction. It doesn't matter if it's the same headline as other newspapers are using, or if the same or similar headline was used in a previous edition of the same newspaper, because people very rarely have two or more newspapers side by side with which to compare. (The only exceptions to that are the cover story headlines, which are seen on the newsrack alongside other papers. But the rules are different for them, for precisely that reason).

On the web, however, the headline often finds itself being used as a title or as a link in an index, and also often finds itself in the same list as headlines from other publications - either competing newspapers or earlier editions of the same newspaper. That means that the headlines have to be meaningful in the context of an index, separate from the article that they introduce. That's a very different type of use, and needs a different kind of composition.

Mark