Thirty five years ago I learned that one of the most troublesome difficulties in public life was enduring the idiosyncrasy of headline writers. Not content to let the reporters fine journalistic endeavor speak for itself, the headline writer had to enhance the subject and hopefully inflame on page one.
Of course reading and understanding the story was only incidental and the facts need not confine the headline writers imagination. Such was the case this week when The Capital Times headline writer mangled a fine story by on snow removal. Former Mayor Soglin says city’s standards for snow plowing have dropped. That headline accurately described the story.
But the heading used on Wednesday's paper had a front page notation that was less that accurate
Soglin: In my day, we knew how to plow streets
Any reader of the article, or my blog for that matter, know that the issue has nothing to to do with the competency of the plowing or the plow operators. It has nothing to do with "know how".
The story speaks for itself. The city of Madison does not commit the resources, equipment or staffing, necessary to clear the streets. If the city wishes to lower the bar, fine, but lets be aware of what we are doing.
In my day we had balls on our antennas so they could be seen above the snow and the drifts were over the houses. And we liked it.
Posted by: mgm | January 07, 2010 at 12:06 PM
Headline writers are vermin. Their misrepresentations are intentional. And it matters, because many more people will see the headline than read the story.
Posted by: wondering | January 07, 2010 at 01:22 PM
While the city is still hiding behind the "salt doesn't work when it gets cold" defense (Schumacker quote this morning about how salt will work "this time"), it was very obvious to me driving in this morning that "this time" they had laid down salt BEFORE it snowed (or at least very early on). Guess it's good that they responded to the outcome of the previous storm, even if the city is still dissembling.
Posted by: wondering | January 07, 2010 at 01:31 PM
Hi Paul Soglin - You are right on with your argument. You are admired among many I talk with every day for having the courage to tell it how it really is. For whatever reason, the city is not prioritizing road safety for its citizerns and it has been happening for at least the past four years in progressively worse demonstrations of inadequacy.
I teach at MATC and I can not BEGIN to tell you how many students are inconvenienced and complaining ALL THE TIME about the lousy plowing and lack of salting in Madison. Many students come from other communities who do a better job and many students can not understand how things have gotten this bad. They do not always have the most money or the best cars and the number of my students having car accidents (albeit minor but still expensive) on the way to classes at Truax has been increasing every year for the past three years. It is a real problem that real people (like us at our class meetings) are talking about all the time. We need to do better.
Thanks for speaking out on this.
Posted by: Kathy Adams | January 07, 2010 at 05:29 PM
We can't bust heads like we used to, but we have our ways. One trick is to tell 'em stories that don't go anywhere, like the time I caught the ferry over to Shelbyville. I needed a new heel for my shoe, so, I decided to go to Morganville, which is what they called Shelbyville in those days. So I tied an onion to my belt, which was the style at the time. Now, to take the ferry cost a nickel, and in those days, nickels had pictures of bumblebees on 'em. "Give me five bees for a quarter," you'd say.
Now where were we? Oh yeah: The important thing was I had an onion on my belt, which was the style at the time. They didn't have white onions because of the war. The only thing you could get was those big yellow ones...
Posted by: Last Exit to Springfield | January 08, 2010 at 06:44 AM
"Soglin: In my day, we knew how to plow streets"
I almost fell out of my chair laughing when I read this and imagined your reaction. What a gas!
Posted by: anon | January 08, 2010 at 11:24 AM
Would you read a newspaper story without a headline? Or a book without a title? Or a blog without a name?
Posted by: anon | January 08, 2010 at 03:29 PM