Headlines
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"Simple Tweets Of Fate: Teju Cole's Condensed News", NPR Morning Edition 4/9/2012:
Blaise Pascal once wrote that writing succinctly can be hard. […]
The Nigerian writer Teju Cole recently devoted himself to the goal of writing in brief. On his Twitter account, he crafts compact stories based on small news items, things you might overlook in the metro section of a newspaper. And with brevity, his stories gain deeper meaning. […]
"Recently I decided to switch up the project and do something a little bit different … Now I'm writing Small Fates about New York City, which is where I live. But I'm writing Tweets based on newspapers of exactly 100 years ago — so, exactly on the anniversary of whenever it came out in the New York Sun, or the New York Tribune or Evening World News. I go to the Library of Congress newspaper archive, which is wonderful. I go to the relevant date, and I basically trawl through the newspaper looking for interesting stories."
This is a great idea, and easy to do. From the front page of the New York Tribune, 4/9/1912:
Meanwhile, today's headline writers sometimes produce accidental masterpieces of concision, revealing a whole novel's worth about the writer's world:
Theophylact said,
April 9, 2012 @ 9:06 am
So the National Socialist (now where have I heard that name before?) "white rights organizattion" is a "civil rights group" on Fox.
[(myl) Well, that's apparently how they describe themselves in their press releases. They have a record label, too.]
Mark Etherton said,
April 9, 2012 @ 10:40 am
If you're looking for (intentional) masterpieces of concision that reveal the writer's world, I doubt you can do better than Fénéon's Nouvelles en trois lignes.
Mark Etherton said,
April 9, 2012 @ 10:42 am
which I see that Teju Cole knows.
Ray Girvan said,
April 9, 2012 @ 10:46 am
WOMAN OF MYSTERY HIS INSANE PUPIL
She Became Crazed 20 Years Ago and Parma Took Her to Save Her from Asylum.
Theodore said,
April 9, 2012 @ 11:42 am
Another source of concise historic news on Twitter is "Tweets of Old". Sources tend to be from ca. 1900±20.
Rod Johnson said,
April 9, 2012 @ 1:41 pm
The Fox affiliate's headline now says "Neo-Nazi group patrolling Sanford," although the article text hasn't changed as far as I can see.
Jonathan Gress-Wright said,
April 9, 2012 @ 4:18 pm
I hate Florida Nazis.
Jerry Friedman said,
April 9, 2012 @ 4:47 pm
@Jonathan Gress-Wright: Hater!
@Theophylact: If I'm not mistaken, local news on Fox affiliates is independent of Fox News. I often watch Fox 8 News in Cleveland when I visit my mother, and it's not conservative to any extent that we life-long liberals notice—nothing like what little Fox News I've seen.
I can come up with three possibilities for the original headline on the National Socialist Movement:
The writer of that headline does think neo-Nazis are civil-rights groups and accidentally revealed it.
The writer of that headline does think neo-Nazis are civil-rights groups and purposely revealed it.
The writer got the description from the National Socialist Movement's press releases (as MYL noted) or some such source and didn't think about it, accidentally revealing his or her ineptitude.
As usual not letting a lack of information stand in my way, I imagine the last possibility is the most likely.
[(myl) Ironically, the author of the original piece, Jennifer Bisram, is from NYC and is "is a member of the National Association of Black Journalists [and] the South Asian Journalists Association". Apparently her education at Queens College didn't extend to an explanation of the term "National Socialism", or the meaning of those funny little pinwheel-symbols on their flags and armbands and so on. It does seem most likely that this is a case of publishing a (summary of) a press release.]
Ellen K. said,
April 9, 2012 @ 4:53 pm
The text has changed slightly. The beginning of the second paragraph now just give the name of the organization again, instead of a description.
There's also an editorial note:
Editor’s Note: The report originally published Saturday inadvertently referred to the National Socialist Movement as a civil rights group. We intended to refer to them as a “self-proclaimed” civil rights group.
Note, follow the link in the original post (not to the original article, but one covering it); it denotes (with updates) the changing headlines, though no mention of the change in the text.
Jerry Friedman said,
April 9, 2012 @ 4:53 pm
Another possibility is the one claimed by the current "Editor’s Note: The report originally published Saturday inadvertently referred to the National Socialist Movement as a civil rights group. We intended to refer to them as a 'self-proclaimed' civil rights group."
Speaking of which, Jonathan, I meant to put a smiley after "Hater!" but maybe it was obvious.
Jonathan Gress-Wright said,
April 9, 2012 @ 5:29 pm
@Jerry Friedman:
I inferred the smiley, thank you. :)
Terry Collmann said,
April 10, 2012 @ 9:20 am
@samuelpepys, the 17th century London diarist, is currently tweeting 1669's events in real time.
Dave said,
April 10, 2012 @ 10:57 am
Re. Ms Bisram, people of south-Asian extraction have a quite different relationship to the swastika, of course, than those from further north-west…
Ken Brown said,
April 12, 2012 @ 10:40 am
To British eyes the headline about the unfortunate Mr Parma implies that there is a street in New York whose name is Squalid Place.
Near where I live in South East London there really is a street called Friendly Place. Ans not far away there is a Major Road (which isn't)
Rikard said,
April 13, 2012 @ 6:42 pm
@Jonathan Gress-Wright: Was that a Blues Brothers reference?