Awards beckon for subs who take time to reckon with words that rhyme...
All good headline writers are dysfunctional humans, even by industry standards. The daily obsession over words, names and sounds to produce one line to do a good story justice, to make an average story sing. Every resort to cliché is a personal failure staring back at you in 66-point type over breakfast the following morning. You’d walk away were it not for the fact you’d have to get a real job, in commerce or something equally awful, and the fact you’d be depriving yourself of that elusive moment when the headline words and story all click so beautifully that you are finally satisfied, for a day.
Getting to that point is a frustrating, demanding and draining process. Like all good things it is not handed to you. I was a pathetic mathematician at school but the discipline taught me that the notion of inspiration belongs up there with U2 in the world’s great frauds. The knowledge that nine times eight equals 72, always, is not arrived at by inspiration. It is learning by repetition. Similarly although we work with words we should not shun mathematics’ lesson.
Recently a headline of mine tickled colleagues and a panel of judges. It read “From second fiddle to fecund Siddle,” and it referred to the exploits of a previously unheralded Australian fast bowler, Peter Siddle. The process by which it was arrived at was simple, if rather laborious. Upon hearing of Peter Siddle’s elevation to the Test team and seeing him in action, you determine that he is going to be a fixture of Australian cricket for years to come. You know, therefore, that stories will be written about him.
Some will be celebrating his feats, others castigating him. So immediately you begin your work – in moments waiting for buses, waiting for drinks at the bar, waiting for buses at the bar. “Siddle” ... what does that rhyme with? And so you go through the alphabet ... aiddle (no), biddle (no), ciddle (no), diddle (possibly), eiddle (no,no,no), fiddle (possibly) and so forth. You have started the process. Many of these linguistic little journeys prove quixotic, but at least you are on a path, even if it proves to lead to a dead end.
And then on to what fiddles do? What are popular phrases involving the instrument? Persons have been known to fiddle when Rome burns. And wasn’t there a fiddler on the roof at one time? But hold on, isn’t the secondary player in an orchestra – the unheralded one – known as the second fiddle?
And now you are on to something, especially as fecund was a favourite word of yours as a youth because it sounded rude in an Irish accent. Ladies and gentlemen, you have a winner. Now it is just up to Peter Siddle – blissfully unaware of your little plot – to produce a performance that confirms his potential. A rash of wickets against the South Africans at the end of 2008 at the SCG and all the pieces fall together.
And that is the beauty of the form we work in. Language is so flexible you can bend it to your will and add your own little piece to its story. It’s why words matter so much. They change it, shape it, influence it every day. If they did not, then many a job would be made redundant tomorrow. Technology has accelerated this process in ways astonishing to a relative Luddite such as myself. During the highly contentious Australia v India cricket series of 2007-2008 I coined a phrase, “Bollyline’”, to describe it after the Indian captain, Anil Kumble, accused the home side of not playing within the spirit of cricket (thanks must also go to the wise counsel of then-Herald cricket writer Alex Brown). I put it on the front page of the late Herald sports edition.
The following day “Bollyline” was the strap across the Sky News and BBC bulletins from London. Within six months, I woke up to a text message stating that “Bollyline” had been used as an answer to a question on the UK version of The Weakest Link. It had taken on a life of its own and long since left the Herald offices where it was born late one Sunday evening.
The world of the headline writer – in various ways such an insular pursuit – has become a lot bigger.
Paul Cully is sports editor of The Sun-Herald and won the 2009 Walkley for best three headings
Mandy Graham is an editorial artist with the Newcastle Herald
