Hitching a ride

I have loved newspapers, since even before one started paying me – at age fourteen – ten cents per column inch for writing high school sports. But I love the newspapers of my imaginings more than the real thing – isn’t that always the way?

        My imagination works particularly on headlines and letters to the editor. Today: about headlines.

        When I started, newspapers often dressed up, explained, and occasionally even subverted their main heads with what I was taught to call “riders,” though, when I tried looking up the term, I found they’re more often called “kickers” in the U.S. and “standfirsts” in Great Britain. These are the small headlines, often italicized and usually underlined, placed above the main head. As in

To take position in administration

Hoolock College coach resigns

I don’t see these often any more. Instead, the papers I read employ “subheads,” which give whoever is writing them more freedom as they can run somewhat longer

Hoolock College coach resigns

Taking position as assistant

to President Ed Gibbon

I don't know which form I like better. What I do know is I’d like to see more riders/kickers/subheads that actually tell the truth rather than simply provide another fact or dimension. And maybe this is why, wherever you put it, I like the term “rider.” Think of two definitions of the term:

• a condition or proviso added to something already maintained.
• a small weight positioned on the beam of a balance for adjustment.

So, I like the term "rider," but the adjustment may ride best in the subhead position; so, we get the statement, then the proviso. In any case, expect to see in this space some headlines I find ridden into the sunset . . . of truth. For example, this one – the headline is from the Washington Post online. (The subhead will always be mine)

Netanyahu apologizes for comment about Arabs

    Since it’s already done the trick