Monday, September 24, 2018

If it's the first thing that comes to mind ...

Let me be the first to admit a little get-off-my-lawnism here: I like headlines that tell you what happened, and I'm thoroughly conditioned to prefer them in the present tense to signal the since-our-last-bulletin timeliness of news. At the same time, I realize that I'm not anyone's target demographic anymore (except maybe Fox's, and one or the other of us is making a pretty drastic mistake in that case). Still, isn't there a case to be made for holding the "just got" construction to, maybe, one of the three display headlines here? The general principle being that if it's the first thing that comes to mind, the editor should lie down and wait for a second thing to come to mind.

Just to be even-handed here, a few more illustrations of the principle:
What's more Fox than sparking a backlash? Actually several things, which we'll try to get to in a bit, but meanwhile, here's another case (slightly down the page) of falling for the first thing that comes to mind:
Please stop. Think of the children.

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