One of the most famous headlines of all time - "Headless Body in Topless Bar"; Credit: --
The man behind what some have called the greatest newspaper headline ever has died. He was 74.
Vincent Musetto was a longtime news editor and film critic at the New York Post, where he cranked out countless headlines and pieces.
But five words stood out, which Musetto penned to encapsulate the gruesome murder of a bar owner in Queens. “Headless Body in Topless Bar” screamed the front page headline of the April 15, 1983 edition of the New York Post.
Nodding to those iconic words, AirTalk looks at the art of crafting a snappy newspaper headline. What makes a great headline? How has that changed in the age of search engine optimization and social media?
Guests:
Barry Levine, executive editor and director of news of the National Enquirer
Roy Peter Clark, Vice President and Senior Scholar, Reporting, Writing & Editing Faculty at Poynter Institute for Media Studies. He is the writer of a number of books on writing. His latest is “How to Write Short: Word Craft for Fast Times” (Little, Brown and Company, 2014)”
Eric Zassenhaus, Assistant Managing Editor of digital content at KPCC