Southern Christian Advocate

The Overgrowth of the Headline.

It is perhaps little known that the present indiscriminate use by the great metropolitan dailies of the scare head or sensational headlines is almost wholly an Americanism, largely developed in the last twenty-five years. This form of newspaper sensationalism is claimed by Mr. Albert Pulitzer to have had its beginning in the New York Morning Journal, a paper started by him some twenty-five years ago. Mr. Pulitzer asserts that such headlines were and are a legitimate introduction to the really sensational and important news items. In the race and rage for attractiveness this use has grown into a meaningless and often grotesque perversion of the original purpose. It might be further added that both readers and papers have been injured in the change. As the flaring headlines have become essential, sensations must be secured to justify their use, even if the reporter must turn his investigations to the lurking scandal of the private home or the dens of debauch, or wrest his news from the realms of Munchausen. One result has been thus put by a man of wide experience in the work of newspapers:

"In their effort not to be beaten in the abnormal," he says, "they frequently overlook the essential. Thus the graver, the sweeter, the finer, the most humorously alluring elements of life seldom are given their due."

Yet these are the very elements that should most appeal to human interest and would so appeal if eye and curiosity were not debauched by this daily service of the sensational or the pseudo-sensational. Mr. Pulitzer proposes to begin a paper on yet other lines intended to correct many of the faults which he finds in the present-day metropolitan paper, and by its originality to appeal to a large and varied class of readers. It is to be hoped that in his new venture he may be as successful in leading a reaction against the exaggerated headline, in which he now sees so many faults, as at first he was influential in its introduction.