My Billings Gazette

When it comes to print, writing a headline is an art of word choice and economy. Somehow, you have to boil a story that has nuance into a finite space. Most headline writers do this by punctuating keywords and main ideas, then letting the story take care of the finer points of context.

And then there are stories like this.

The story headline is enough of a grabber: "Midget wrestlers dead after hooker romp." I mean, I see that, and I'm reading the story that follows.

The Web headline is even better: "Mexican wrestling midget brothers found dead after hooker romp." With that much context, heck, you might not need to read the story. What more need be said?

Finally, this dispatch would not be complete without a nod to the great Dave Barry, in the form of this observation:

Hooker Romp would be a great name for a rock band.

Our good friend John McIntyre cited this a while ago, and it's only because of my own sloth that I'm so late in picking it up. Nonetheless, time's passage has not diminished its brilliance.

What is it, you ask? A language smackdown by the esteemed Geoffrey Pullum on Washington Post columnist Charles Krauthammer.

The item is so short and devastating, like a well-thrown uppercut, that excerpting can't do it justice. Here's a little taste: "Don't lurk behind a putative linguistic observation because you think it will sound more like someone who went to college." Now, run along and read the whole thing.

Here's something else that demands your attention: Wordnik. The interface is so simple and so abundantly cool that it requires no preamble. Just click and have it. (Also, drop in the juvenile words, if you must. I did.)

I have given you joy and a toy. What more could you want?

Our previous post, on the continuing soap opera that is Brett Favre, asked readers to weigh in on whether it qualified as news. I promised my own take Monday; I've strung it out a couple of more days (just like Favre).

My take: It's quasi-news. How's that for straddling the issue?

Here's the deal: If you're an NFL beat reporter, you're constantly on the phone, trying to drum up items that move the chains a little or, if you're good and/or lucky, turn into a big story. If you're an NFL reporter whose beat encompasses the Minnesota Vikings and their ongoing dalliance with Favre, you're calling his agent, Bus Cook, every day and hoping he answers the phone.

I know from my own experience that Cook answers his phone more often than many agents. But when it comes to Favre, he's a lot more selective. Dave Campbell, the Associated Press reporter who wrote the story in question, got Cook. He had to write something. That there's no news (that is, something we didn't know previously) in it is, sadly, sort of beside the point. Cook talked. Stories get written and dispersed.

But that doesn't mean this story is worth more than a smidge of newsprint or a small gaggle of pixels. It's not. If your publication is in Minnesota or Green Bay, maybe a little more than that. But not much more.

Because, as several commenters rightly noted, there's no there there.

Let's play a little game, boys and girls.

Here's how it works:

1. I give you a link to what seems to be a work of journalism.

2. You vote in the comments section on whether it's news or not news.

3. I return Monday with a verdict and a deconstruction of the item's language (as this is, purportedly, a language-oriented blog).

Sound like fun?

Here we go:

Favre's agent says quarterback is still retired

By DAVE CAMPBELL
AP Sports Writer

MINNEAPOLIS—Brett Favre remains retired, as far as his agent is concerned.

Favre’s longtime representative Bus Cook said Friday afternoon in an interview with The Associated Press that he is unaware of any pending change in Favre’s plans. Cook says he speaks with his friend every day, but not about football.

So, folks: News or not news? Tell me which and why in the comments section.

I've written before about Twitter, on the old site. As yet, I'm still in my long-gestating making-your-acquaintance phase with the application. But I have begun to grasp the possibilities.

Others, it seems, have to, in ways good and bad.

I was scanning the sports wire just a few minutes ago, and two Twitter-related stories moved within minutes of each other.

The first:

ST. LOUIS (AP) — St. Louis Cardinals manager Tony La Russa is suing the social-networking site Twitter, claiming an unauthorized page that used his name to make light of drunken driving and two Cardinals pitchers who died damaged his reputation and caused emotional distress.

The second:

Lance Armstrong has announced the birth of his son on the social-networking site Twitter.

Armstrong, who won the Tour de France seven straight years after overcoming testicular cancer, posted a tweet about 11:15 p.m. EDT Thursday welcoming Max Armstrong to the world. He said his son and girlfriend, Anna Hansen, were both fine and attached a picture of the newborn.

(In case you're wondering, Example No. 1 would be the bad way.)

A few thoughts here. First, I'm all for low barriers of entry to the online world, but it seems to me that Tony La Russa has a credible case here, one that can't be compromised by his shortcomings as a baseball manager.

Second, the Armstrong example is a great example of Twitter's utility, giving someone with a lot of followers -- and Armstrong is one of the Twittersphere's most prominent users -- instant access to an audience when he/she has something to say.

Finally, I'm a little alarmed at how the Associated Press, in the Armstrong story, so blithely tossed the word "tweet" out there. (A "tweet," for the uninitiated, is shorthand for a Twitter message, because, you know, "Twitter message" is so pedestrian.)

I will continue to play along -- you can follow me here -- but I will resist "tweet" for as long as I can. What can I say? I'm a nonconformist.

I'll use a bit of good news today for reflection and motivation.

It seems that this blog (and, specifically, its previous incarnation) has been recognized by the Pacific Northwest chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists. It received third place in the specialty-blog category.

That's great, as far it goes. But the blog has been sluggish of late, for a lot of reasons, and many of them center on me. So consider this my first step in kicking it back up a notch.

I can think of no better way to do this than turning to our friend John McIntyre, who has been busy with his new blog since his departure from the Baltimore Sun.

This entry from a few days ago, on the tendency toward error, is typically first-rate.

A sampling:

We are overly reliant on our perceptions, which are partial, and our memories, which reconstruct rather than record. This is why eyewitness testimony in trials so regularly contributes to the conviction of innocent people.

And, copy editors should take particular note here, we defer too much to experts, who are in turn overconfident in their expertise. The medical industry, in an effort to reduce anesthesiologists’ errors in the operating room, has taken a number of measures, among them “attitude adjustment.” Pay close attention: “They began discouraging the idea of doctor as know-it-all, and encouraged nurses and others to speak up if they saw someone—especially the anesthesiologist—do something wrong. In error-speak, this is known as ‘flattening the authority gradient,’ and it has been shown as an effective way to reduce errors.”

Of the many endeavors involving language, perhaps none is so stultifying as legalese.

So it warms the heart to see a judge -- confronted with a case involving a ticked-off golfer who wants to sue over his booting from a college team -- sprinkle his opinion not with stuffy jargon but instead golf references.

(The golfer, by the way, is Andrew Guiliani, son of the former New York mayor. But that's neither here nor there.)

In rejecting Guiliani's claims against Duke University, the judge -- U.S. District Court Judge Wallace W. Dixon -- even quotes from the greatness that is "Caddyshack":

Dixon quips that Giuliani's attempt to use a particular legal maneuver - one not recognized in North Carolina courts - "brings to mind Carl Spackler's analysis from the movie 'Caddyshack.'

"He's on the final hole," Dixon writes, quoting Spackler, the movie's mumbling, gopher-chasing groundskeeper, played by comedian Bill Murray. "He's about 455 yards away, he's gonna hit about a 2 iron, I think."

As any golfer knows, a 2 iron would do little to close such a hefty gap.

Simply outstanding.

You might recall Ralph Keyes and his zeal for ridding journalism of retro references.

Gene Weingarten of the Washington Post has a fitting response.

Read it here.