Headlines tell the story

When you see a headline saying that someone is quitting one of the main sports organisations to join the other one, my advice is simple. Don’t read the story, unless you have actually heard of the person concerned. It will be a complete waste of time, because you will never hear of that person again. The speaker is a Professor Albert Brave Einstein, a specialist in Applied Sporting Studies at Factor Fearpoly University (formerly a Poly FearFactor). He has devoted the last seven years of his life to developing a method of getting through sports on the newspaper and on television and radio  faster, and now he has perfected it by producing a list of rules telling you which stories to ignore.

“People think they can try to read papers faster and faster, and listen to the sports news faster and faster,” he says, “but that doesn’t work. You just read the same old sports junk at a higher speed, and probably remember less of it. The real solution is to weed out the sports junk and just read the good stuff. The clues are all in the headline. The headline will tell you whether there is a sports story or not. The clearest clue is the presence of the word ‘may.’ Any sporting headline using the word ‘may’ can safely be avoided in any newscast.” Could he perhaps give an example? “Surely. Here’s one from a recent sporting paper: ‘Trinidad and Tobago may qualify for the next World Cup if they don’t crash because of the meddling from FIFA.’ What does that tell us? It tells us that the details of previous disasters in World Cup football may be contained in the information somewhere at FIFA. I think we all knew that. It also tells us that there are no new developments in that scenario; it is so every four years, but the paper is loath to let it drop. So it prints a non-story. Something we don’t need to read. Actually, the headline could also have been ‘FIFA black box may not contain sporting crash answer,’ which would also have been true, but papers have a resistance to being downbeat.

“The point is that lots of stories are just printed to keep the reader aware of a certain story, rather as companies play music down the phone line to callers who are on hold. Almost every story about peace meetings between the West Indies Players Association (WIPA) and the West Indies Cricket Board (WICB) are on that level, as are peace-process meetings involving rival factions in the NAAA battle for the presidency, Malvern-Queen’s Park Cricket Club hockey meetings, Triathlon stalemates and so on. “Sports news should be about things that happen; it must not be like the other news from a newsroom. This is no longer true. Sports news is now about what people say will happen. When Sports chiefs promise to do things, or the other side threatens to do something, or someone insists that someone else do something, nothing has actually happened. For that reason I would never read a story under an administrator in sport headline which contained such words as ‘vow,’ ‘threat,’ ‘urge,’ ‘undertake’, and so on. Or, of course, ‘bid.’

Pardon?
“More time is wasted over bids to get World Cup venues, bids to sell the New Brian Lara Cricket Stadium, bids to do this and that than real events. So, golden rule No 3 —  avoid headlines with ‘bid’ in it. Rule No 4: Avoid headlines with ‘Mikey’ and ‘Tony.’

Pardon again?
“There are some characters who catch the press fancy and whose every move is reported, even though no member of the public has the faintest interest in what they do. Years ago it used to be Brian and well somebody. Now it is Brian and anybody, and Brian and nobody, and Dwight, and Stern...” How many rules are there, to guarantee profitable sports newspaper reading? “Oh, lots, but only about 20 important ones. Avoid all sports stories under headings containing the word ‘leak.’ Avoid all sports stories about ‘new figures,’ because all new figures are contradicted the next day by other new figures, and in any case all new figures are actually old figures which have only just got published. Avoid all stories which involve an apparent change of heart...”

Meaning?
“All headlines which claim that someone in the public eye has rethought his position about something. It’s almost always got a hidden agenda. There was a lovely example in The Fearless One newspapers (now out for the first time) the other day of a headline which had two changes of mind in the same headline... Got it somewhere... yes, here we are!” And the Professor flashes a cutting which says: “Swimmers Revolt over U-Turn by sporting clubs.” “See what I mean?” he says triumphantly. One certainly does. But if you eliminate everything according to your rules, what is there left to read? For the first time he looks taken aback. Then he brightens up. “The crossword?” he suggests.

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