The Press: The Headline Hunters

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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 a skirt as well. Last week it was pinned on a bulletin board, and Copyreader Harry Mott got an extra $20 in his pay envelope for writing the headline of the week.

Few newspaper readers suspect how much headwork goes into headlines. A head must do more than nutshell the news and lure the reader into the story. First & foremost, it must "count," which means that the type must fit an allotted space. Hemmed in by columns, the copydesker spends his life finding short words like "nips" for long ones like "arrests."

Until the tabloids came along, headlines tended to be wordy and dull, with each "bank" of type telling part of the story. Now, most headlines are briefer and more to the point. Nowhere in the U.S. are they as pointed, cynical, impudent or brassily clever as in the Daily News. Sample (on meat prices and inflation):

PRICES SOAR, BUYERS SORE

COW JUMPS OVER THE MOON

The man who made the Daily News, the late Captain Joe Patterson, demanded that his headline hunters make their heads "understandable, applicable and bright." The man who keeps them that way is tall (6 ft. 3 in.), red-mustached William Bernard Murphy, 53, copydesk chief. A paper like the Daily News is only as good as its copy desk, and the desk is as good as its chief, who must combine speed, accuracy, zeal, bad temper, and a quick eye on guard for double meanings.

Bill Murphy is no part of the newspaper tradition that copyreaders are just broken-down reporters. A Yaleman ('17) and onetime Wall Street bond salesman, he left Manhattan to work on the News-owned Detroit Mirror. When Patterson torpedoed it without notice in 1932, Murphy went back to the News to stay.

One night in 1937 the late Harvey Deuell, managing editor of the Daily News, told Murphy to "take over the copy desk on a temporary basis." The "temporary" basis became permanent; Murphy likes it—and the pay of more than $10,000 a year—well enough to turn down better jobs. Recently, when he lost an eye, he thought he might have to change; but his one good eye is still enough to oversee the output of his 14 "rim men." They are all experts at trimming and polishing copy, as well as heading it up. They are not hampered by the shibboleths of most copy desks (Newsmen may end heads with prepositions). The News copydeskers are well-paid men by copydesk standards: they start at $110 a week and go up to $140, plus bonuses for prize heads.

Some of their heads are newspaper classics. When a man walking home ran into an acquaintance and got into a fatal argument, the Daily News headlined it:

A BUMP, A WORD,

A MAN IS DEAD