i can't find the words

  

It’s probably every journalist’s dream job to work at The New York Times, right? Which means that there’s a lot of competition and it’s very hard to trick them into hiring you. Copy editors have it especially tough; The Times‘ headline style is unlike that of any other paper, so it’s a skill you pretty much have to be born with. But thanks to Slate, I think I’ve figured out how to do it.

Consider: “Bigger Is Better, Except When It’s Not”—a 2007 article looking at body size in sports. “Smaller Can Be Better (Except When It’s Not)”—a tech piece from 2004. “A Marriage Penalty, Except When It Isn’t”—on couples and the tax code, 2003. This is the Times headline as koan, inviting readers to suspend in-the-box thinking and seek enlightenment below the fold. The style presents thesis and antithesis; it embraces binary thinking yet disavows it; it builds dichotomies and collapses them.

Here, let’s try with today’s Dallas Morning News:

Lingering hardship/Coastal Texans pitch tents near padlocked FEMA trailers
Many displaced by Hurricane Ike are still having a rough time. FEMA gave them trailers and told them they couldn’t move in yet.
FEMA Helps, Maybe/Coastal Texans Have Trailers, Except That They Don’t

Texans out of step
The state’s politicians are seeing their power in Washington fade. Because apparently they expected a monopoly on influence?
Life Fair, but Not Always

U.S. seniors find they can get more — for less
Seniors are moving to retirement communities in Mexico because it is cheaper there. So they’re just living in little enclaves of other elderly Americans.
Seniors Flock to Mexico, Except That It Isn’t, Really

No longer an unspoken role
Well, this one’s easy. It’s about the man who drove Lee Harvey Oswald to work the day he assassinated JFK. He mostly hasn’t talked about his role in the 45 years since.
Driver Kept Silent, Except When He Didn’t

Dear The New York Times:
Job, please!

  

This is maybe the most ridiculous junk mail ever:

Planned Parenthood sent these out a few months ago. On the back, it asks for “the jazziest picture of your pet showing support of women’s health. Show your pet wearing your favorite pro-choice t-shirt or holding a pro-choice sign.”

Sadly, though, I could not enter. Bling and Scooter are just a little too young to understand weighty moral decisions.

  

Here’s a thing about David Foster Wallace that is a few months older than my brother.

“Writing fiction takes me out of time,” he explains. “I sit down and the clock will not exist for me for a few hours. That’s probably as close to immortal as we’ll ever get. I’m scared of sounding pretentious because anyone who writes fiction is saying, ‘Look at this thing I’ve written.’”

I promise it’s good. Go read it.

  

So, there was a fairly important election the other day. But I don’t really want to talk about it; I am easily riled by ballot initiatives and the Electoral College and the two-party system etc. etc. etc.

A New York Times-branded GIF in the Facebook gift shop reminded me about how everyone saves “important” newspapers. (Newspaper journalists especially tend to this; dig through the desk of anyone who’s been at your local rag for 10 years and you’ll definitely find papers for 9/11, Katrina, the war in Iraq, local sports teams winning championships and so on. Me, I’ve got the Cardinals winning the world series, the Florida Gators winning national titles and now this election.) Indeed, The Dallas Morning News sold out and started another press run to sate the memento-lacking hordes. And we weren’t the only ones. (Now, if only those people would subscribe, we could save some jobs.)

Here is what our cover looked like. I didn’t write any of the words that you see:

If you look at the top 50 newspapers by circulation, you’ll see that our headline wasn’t very original. Three others had the same thing in big type, and eight more used that quote with “to America” tacked on the end. But it’s not as though anyone had something fresh. Here are all the words from all those papers’ biggest headlines:

So I guess no one could argue if your headline was Historic history: President Obama, come change America!

But there were some impressive covers. The Chicago Sun-Times was the clear winner. And the Orlando Sentinel went with something similar, but an ad in a corner of the page pretty much ruins it for me.

 

Our cross-metroplex “rivals” had a pretty snazzy front, but I’m no fan of the headline — sure, the electoral-vote result is a bit one-sided, but Obama won by, what, 6 or 7 percentage points? That’s not really a landslide.

The always-lovely Hartford Courant decided to make a family poster!

Oh, and that Facebook gift? It looks nothing like the actual New York Times:

 

If you aren’t bored of newspapers yet, there are even more here. Some of the smaller papers can get ridiculous — my favorite is The Beaumont Enterprise, which apparently agrees with Stephen Colbert about racism being over.