One Call, That's All

Never having been incarcerated, I don't know for sure if new prisoners actually get just one phone call before their cell door slams shut. If they do, most probably would not call a sportswriter.

Years ago when I was sports editor of the Wisconsin Rapids Daily Tribune, Dick Knar, basketball coach at Assumption High School, phoned me from the local police station about 12:30 one Saturday night. He was sloshed, and he was headed for the slammer.

Knar was something of a wild man. He started games attired rather nattily in a coat and tie, but soon ripped off the tie and was known to toss the jacket on the floor, rip his shirt, and actually jump up and down as the contest progressed. We once took advantage of his antics by doing a photo sequence.

Tribune photographer Bill Kiefer aimed a telephoto lens at the coach throughout a Royals' game. We picked out five scenes showing Knar's transformation from a calm gentleman into a raging maniac. As Associated Press members, we gave the sequence with captions to the AP. It went nationwide, appearing in many papers, including the Los Angeles Times.

In his late-night call, Knar asked if I would keep his arrest on a drunk and disorderly charge out of the Tribune. He had lost control in the bar of the Dixon Hotel, where the sports crowd hung out, and finally had to be removed by the police. I told him that since I now knew about the incident, I had an obligation to tell our managing editor. Anyway, I said, one of our reporters would pick it up on the police beat early in the morning.

Managing editor Ollie Williams decided the story didn't merit any special treatment on the sports page, but we would run it as a normal police report item. A bit later, the high school principal appeared in chief editor Carl Otto's office.

After the priest left, Otto emerged with a broad smile, and said. "He wanted me to kill that story about Knar getting arrested. I told him if the Pope was here asking us to kill a story, I wouldn't do it. But I would print the news that he asked all over the front page. Our little talk ended right there."

Heads Up

Writing newspaper headlines can be a high art, but also a risky business. The story labels must fit in a precise space in a style specified by the publisher, and be written in a minute or two. Trying to quickly capture the gist of a story in an appealing way doesn’t always work out.

Almost anything can result in a headline gaffe. The classic example used in journalism school in the 50s stemmed from the fact that Manly and Fertile are two small towns in Iowa. A newspaper serving both communities announced a wedding thus: Manly Man Weds Fertile Miss. Wonder how many offspring resulted?

A headline blunder ruined my first attempt to cover a basketball game as sports editor of the Daily Tribune in Wisconsin Rapids in 1964. The home team scored an important win, and I affixed a rather large headline to my story. It said something like: Dempsey Scores 19 as Raiders Win. Seems ok, however, the young man’s name was Dempze, not Dempsey. Dempze was a well-known family name around Wisconsin Rapids, and Chief Editor Carl Otto blistered me with a commentary on my headline writing abilities when he saw my version.

Otto skewered me so thoroughly that I greeted his comeuppance with relish a few months later. He had a special red phone in his office available for a “stop the presses” command just like those in the movies. Every day, just before the presses were turned on, the printing plant superintendent hustled into Otto’s office with a proof of the front page. He and Otto sat side-by-side checking Page One to ferret out any errors needing last minute corrections. One day they somehow missed a badly misspelled word in the biggest headline on the page. When he found out (after thousands of copies had been printed), Otto turned redder than the phone he had failed to use that day. Playing dumb, I observed he didn’t appear to be feeling well, and offered any help I could give. That turned him purple.

My headline recollections were inspired by an internet message forwarded by Ray Brown, retired Intermountain Research Station scientist, and Dave Tippets, public affairs officer at the Rocky Mountain Research Station in Fort Collins, CO. The message showed strange headlines published by papers around the world Here they are, with comments:

Alton Attorney Accidentally Sues Himself (Wonder which of him won)

County to pay $250,000 to advertise lack of funds (That’ll help)

Volunteers search for old Civil War planes (Difficult task. Didn't the first plane fly in 1903?)

Army vehicle disappears (Story was about an Australian Army vehicle with camouflage paint that mysteriously vanished)

Caskets found as workers demolish mausoleum (Probably were bodies in them, too)

Ten Commandments: Supreme Court says some OK, some not (Now, there’s a choice?)

Utah Poison Control Center reminds everyone not to take poison (Duh)

Federal Agents Raid Gun Shop, Find Weapons (Surprise!)

Statistics show that teen pregnancy drops off significantly after age 25 (I would have guessed 20)

One-armed man applauds the kindness of strangers (Oh come on, we know what the headline writer meant)