Playful Page One headlines annoy reader
A vacation week’s worth of voice messages produced few comments from readers last week. One complained about the playfulness of these two headlines on last Thursday’s front page:
“Bellwether — or not” (A headline on a story that said McCain’s win in Missouri stripped the state of its record of predicting the presidential winner nationally.)
“PROFILES ENCOURAGED” (A story about a study that found that social networking – “hanging out” online — is good for teens.)
Not at all clever, he said.
Another reader complained about the “Bellwether — or not” headline, saying that McCain’s victory, not the state’s bellwether status, was the more important element. The subhead on that story, in much smaller type, said “McCain takes Missouri in razor-thin win.”
Steve Parker is the deputy managing editor for news, and oversees the Post-Dispatch's front page. STLtoday's online news editors are on his newsroom team. Parker has been at the paper since September 1980. 
Sorry, 3000 out of 3 million is still a ‘razor thin win’. I don’t care that Missouri has been compared to a castrated goat for many years. It’s OK if we’ve reverted to the Show Me State,instead.
I do think that the slimmest of margins (despite a fair landslide for Nixon) indicates that Missouri reflected the general unhappiness with both candidates for various reasons– one of which being that Obama and Co. did not spend much time in the rural parts of the state where they could have changed some minds, and unhappiness with McCain over Sarah Palin. Once again, Nader acted as a spoiler here, taking the winning votes from Obama.
A headline should be pithy and attention getting. I don’t think most people caught the pun in Profiles Encouraged instead of Profiles in Courage.