The Press: The Headline Hunters

In the bustling seventh-floor newsroom of the New York Daily News, a shirt-sleeved copyreader, pale-faced under the fluorescent lights, strove for a headline that would tell a crime story. When he had one that suited him, he flipped it over to the man in the "slot" of the horseshoe-shaped copy desk. It read:

WILD HUNT NIPS

2-GUN, 2-PANTS

CROOK IN SKIRTS

To the 2,225,000 readers of the tabloid Daily News next morning—or the smart minority that could read headlines—the head meant that the cops had caught an armed burglar wearing two pairs of pants and...