Moo-ving violations

An old story (writing about 1992 in 2015) about headlines

My boss tells the story of the student sitting in a dean’s office trying to explain why he got F’s in four subjects and a D in English literature. “I spent too much time on English literature,” the student explained.

That, as I was reminded while telling an old journalism story last night, is what it was like in a newsroom. In 12-15 years in journalism, depending on how you score it, I only met one person, Chris Simmons, who could consistently avoid the constant comedic pratfalls that made newsrooms into something not like a circus, but like the green room where the clowns put on their noses. Because the rest of us would spend too much time on one thing until we broke it, or until something else withered from neglect.

At this point I should mention that this story contains the F-word in its periphrastic manifestation, with some elision, used as a verb to describe the act itself. The very act itself. Don’t feel bad, I had to look up periphrastic myself, but you’ve been warned. If you shock easily, it might be a good time to stop reading.

Jeremy Nafziger wrote a story one night about a candlelight vigil on Court Square that began, “The wind blew out their candles but it may have carried their words.” I remember that line, and how much I enjoyed the story, and I remember that I spent too much time making sure all was right with that story and didn’t spend enough time on Derek D. Barr’s story about a sex crime trial. I’ve lost the details of that one over time, but I remember that it mentioned “fluids,” which were a significant plot point in the trial. And some number of people called to complain about the explicitness of the story, and as often happened when the managing editor and the general manager got too many calls, it turned out there was a rule against it.

But this story is about the night Jeremy had written a story about bestiality, which had occurred at the auction house on Virginia Avenue. The story included the line, “Oh, Bossy. You’re an animal.” It included a half a dozen or more lines like that, and I had to go through and take them out, often while doubled over with giggly hilarity. Jeremy didn’t make it easy, and somehow I missed the line where he called it a “moo-ving violation,” because there was the rest of the paper to put out. Of course the managing editor threatened to fire me the next day, but by that time it was what he said instead of “good morning.”

The event at the auction had happened before, and they put up a camera, and they caught the fellow. There was damage to the cow, and it had to be put down, and the charges included that. I do not know the nature of the cow’s injuries, and I did not ask at the time. (It needed to be said.)

I don’t feel so bad about the “moo-ving violation” but I’m still annoyed about the headline.

Headlines were sometimes clear, sometimes difficult. One time I had to write about astronauts with sore fingers doing a mock tower in space during an early shuttle flight, and they had to construct it again the next day as part of the mission, and I had to find another word for “construction.” Thank the gods of journalism for the composing room person who stopped me from running the headline, “Astronauts rest hands for second erection.” (It’s lonely out in space, Elton John will tell you.)

One did not argue with composing room people in that era. A fellow named Herb sliced the shirt sleeve and part of the bicep of a city editor in a composing room accident involving an Xacto knife and a difference of opinion. Asked nicely, Herb would re-enact the accident with a satisfied smile on his face. I became fast friends with Herb, though not because of that.

You didn’t argue with them, and you had to ask nicely. If I sent John Ball a headline at the Petersburg newspaper that was half an E too long, I’d ask him if it would fit. He’d stare at the space on the page for a minute and then tell me, “I could fit the Barnum and Bailey Circus in there.” I’d ask later if it fit, and he’d say, “Like a wedding dick.” In between, he’d slice the spaces between the letters a half-a millimeter at a time and consolidate the remainder until it fit. Whether it fit his metaphor was a question for another era, when it may have had more relevance. Or at least people thought it did.

But then the world moved on and you had to make the headlines fit on the screen, not on the page. Long story not as short as it could be, you couldn’t ask a John Ball to slice a millimeter out of a WYSIWIG program. A thin was a thin, an EN was an EN, and an EM was an EM, and those are types of spaces for the 99 percent of the population who never worked with hot type or with cold in its infancy. So you pruned and refined the headline on the screen, and sometimes it fit when you were done.

In my entire journalism career, 12-15 years depending on how you score it, in what may have been 30,000 or more headlines, I only wrote one that I remember fitting perfectly the first time. “Man Arrested While Fucking Cow” fit to the pica, to the point, to the nth degree. I can’t say whether John Ball’s metaphor fit, because it was just a hook-up. But I knew that my newspaper days had reached their white phosphorous highlight that night, and eventually they fired me over something else.

We didn’t run the headline, of course. I deleted it and started from scratch, and told my reporters in my sternest voice to never do anything like that, and it wasn’t quite the hardest they ever laughed at me, but it got me through the night. I suppose there was other news that night, that somebody got stabbed, or raised a tax, or cut a ribbon, or gave an award. But that’s the one I remember. And I remember when the Associated Press editor called up. One of them called every night, working through the list of 30 or so Virginia dailies, asking for news stories in the same bored voice that a reporter used calling half a dozen dispatchers seeking fires, felonies, or fatalities. “Nothing from cop calls,” was like a single word, albeit hyphenated, and today it would be a hashtag.

Sometimes there would be murders when the AP called, or I’d pitch something interesting but too local for them, but most nights the call was perfunctory. That night I told the AP editor to take a look at what I’d sent her and she squalled with laughter, yelled something to somebody across the room, and hung up after a quick thank you.

I hope there weren’t any murders that night.

This cropped up in Facebook memories and seemed worth sharing again.