The headlines of op-ed columns

One very strange-- and occasionally distressing-- tradition at newspapers is that editors write the headlines even for opinion pieces written by other people. In other words, and those who have  written op-eds know, you submit your op-ed, and the editors give it some weird headline of their own choosing, instead of the one you thought would be good. Sometimes this works out very well -- the editors think of something pithy and clever you'd never have thought of-- but other times they come up with something that's completely off base, or even actively misleading in terms of its (non)relation to what you wrote. (

I felt that way about my most recent LAT column, which was about the implications of the Hamdan decision for potential liability under the War Crimes Act. This time, the headline ended up being Did Bush Commit War Crimes?, which was frustrating, since the piece was intended as sober analysis, and never suggested that Bush himself commited war crimes or could be prosecuted for the same-- but the headline was, well, rather provocative, and so far about fifty people have sent me enraged emails.)

I wonder about the origin of separating the writing of headlines from the writing of articles-- especially opinion pieces. Is it just an odd tradition? Or is there some logic behind it?

Comments

[Guest]

Well, did Bush commit war crimes?

[Joshua Dienstag]

Rosa -- my collegiate newspaper experience is a little rusty but ... article writers generally don't know where their articles will appear in the paper, and whether they will run over one column, two columns or many columns of text. Generally, the font size of headlines is fixed by paper style so you can't really write a headline until you know what space you have to fill. And headlines generally need to fill the space alloted, white space being frowned upon. This makes for tricky writing, esp with one and two-column heads, since words can't be hyphenated in headlines and short words can leave too much white space while other word combinations won't fit so .... editors write heads at the last minute.

[Orin Kerr]

I had a similar experience when I wrote a piece for the Los Angeles Times on how Justice O'Connor's replacement might change the direction of the Supreme Court. The editors chose the headline, "O'Connor's Successor Will Likely Be a Swinger." Hmm, not exactly what I had in mind.

[Ibn Kafka]

Well, I would add my voice to that of "guest": is it that far-fetched to entertain the notion that the president of the United States could be held liable for his actions in connection with the illegal invasion of Iraq?

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