Star headline writers are at it again

by David Safier

NOTE: I just read further on BfA (haven't had time to see what others posted today) and found AzBlueMeanie wrote about the same headline. My bad. But what the hell. It deserves another airing. Meanie, you can rap me across the nose with a bag of pixels if you want. [See story below for nose reference.]

The Senate passed a birther bill that's a little less birthy than the earlier House version. It lowers the bar a bit on what kind of proof of U.S. birth presidential candidates need to produce in Arizona to get on the ballot.

Here's the headline on the front page of the Star. Remember, we're talking about an article about the passage of a birther bill.

AZ Senate eases way for ballot eligibility

Any English speaking human being would read that to mean, it just got easier to become eligible to run. But the intent of the bill is to make it harder. A small part of me thinks, the Star Creative Headline Team just screwed up on this one — that they were trying to say, "It'll be easier to get on the ballot than if the full blown birther bill passed." If so, it's just a lousy headline, and the writer as well as the editor should have their noses rapped with a rolled up copy of the newspaper. ("Bad headline writer! Bad editor!") The other part of me thinks, the headline writers want to make the birther movement sound reasonable.

Let's see how other papers headlined the same Howie Fischer article.

Arizona lawmakers OK 'birther' bill requiring documents to get on ballot (East Valley Tribune)

Ariz. Senate approves candidate citizenship legislation (Yuma Sun)

See how easy it is to write an accurate headline, Star Headline Writers? Want to see another example? OK, here.

Senate OKs proof of citizenship requirements to be on ballot

That example came from — drum roll, please — The Star. That's right. Wednesday at 5:28 pm, the Star put a slightly abridged version of Fischer's article online with that quite reasonable headline. The headline in the print edition and the longer online version which is dated 12:00 am Thursday morning are both headed, AZ Senate eases way for ballot eligibility.

You gotta wonder.