By Arthur Alpert

Headlines only seem simple.

In fact, they do a lot – identifying stories and, often, getting to their essence, sometimes persuading us to read, alerting us to the story’s relative importance, conveying excitement and entertaining, too.

Headline writers accomplish all of that with three basic tools words, fonts and letter size – within space restrictions. Writing a good headline one column wide is no snap.

And unlike, say, the writers of advertisements, news editors share the responsibilities of reporters, including accuracy and fairness. (We’ll ignore those British-style tabloids that prize fun and fancy.)

In sum, headline writing is a complex art even before taking into account the temptation to be credulous, which two rubrics gracing the Albuquerque Journal’s “Metro & NM” page (C1) Thursday, May 27 brought to mind.

The first, “LULAC: Montoya Probe is Biased,” ran atop Dan Boyd’s story from the Journal Capital Bureau.

The colon made it clear that the “bias” opinion came from the League of United Latin American Citizens (or, as Boyd specified in his lead, “the New Mexico chapter of a national Latino civil rights group…”). This also established a proper distance between the actor in the story (LULAC) and the newspaper – as in “we didn’t say it, LULAC did.”

The second head, “Berry Has Eye on Efficiency, Transparency,” ran over staff writer Dan McKay’s report on the Albuquerque Mayor’s speech to the Chamber of Commerce a day earlier.

McKay’s lead paragraph did not, in fact, say much about “efficiency” or “transparency,” but the headline did summarize the story, so let that pass.

No, the problem lay in the headline writer’s certainty about Mayor Berry’s peepers.

Oh, I’m pretty certain the Mayor does want efficiency and transparency. But I don’t know that, not beyond a shadow of a doubt.

All I know is what the Mayor is saying. And McKay, who was there, wrote what he heard the Mayor say, not what the Mayor is thinking or eyeing.
So the following would be better headlines:

“Berry: Looking for Efficiency and Transparency” or “Berry Says He’s Seeking Efficiency, Transparency.”

Like the LULAC rubric, they would be accurate and would establish the proper distance between the actor in the story (Mayor Berry) and the newspaper.

It’s possible, of course, that Journal headline writers can see into the souls of the people in its narratives.

In which case, never mind.