Wednesday, March 19, 2008

Confessions & the wild west...

I've just written the worst headline ever.

Not here, this one's alright.

I'm currently in placement at Canwest News Service. It's a Canadian wire service. I've spent one week at the Atlantic Desk and this week on the Prairie Desk. Next week is Breaking News and I'm praying I finally get a byline I can add to my portfolio.

Back to the terrible headline...

I had to trim a story by Geoff Kirbyson of the Winnipeg Free Press down a few hundred words and stylize it for national distribution. The story was about some of the 'Peg's big-wig financial workers who are also musicians. Once a year they hold a sort of battle of the bands and raise money for charity. It's a really fun story and the band names are top notch (SubPrimal Scream feat. Miss Representation.)

As far as writing headlines, I tend to stick to two themes;

1) Witty and terribly inappropriate (I had to come up with a headline earlier this week for an article about people who were fed up with loud train whistles. I was seriously considering "Train whistles blow: residents.")

2) Song lyrics.

Imagine my surprise and complete devastation when a story gets tossed in my lap combining rock & roll with her long-time adversary/secret-lover, money, on top of which I'm told to do whatever I want with the headline, and I can't think of a single, witty, fun thing.

I ended up calling it "Canada's largest office party."

They say confession is good for the soul, but typing that a second time made me feel much worse.

So... To somehow redeem myself, or at least to take my mind off my own suffering, I'm going to change gears and share the top three things I found online while scanning for "news" for 8 hours today.

The good...

I feel for this guy. Sometimes I wish I could do the same thing. But I don't think I'm worth nearly as much. I may actually have to end up paying other people to take it off my hands. Godspeed, Ian Usher.

The bad...

My absolute favourite part is the very last sentence.

The ugly...

Before you get too involved in the site, let me explain. I randomly found this site and it's inspired me to start a new category of links here. The site can be a bit slow, but the work is amazing and so far I'm especially fond of Michael Hussar's paintings. But boy, it sure can fit my category of ugly.