Creative Editing
Chapter 9
Exercise 13
13. Write a headline for each of the following four stories, using the headline specification indicated for each story. Use Helvetica Bold typeface.
a. 2-30-2:
A 62-year-old man, blinded in a traumatic accident nine years ago, regained his sight after he was struck by lightning near his home, his wife and doctor said yesterday.
Doctors confirmed that Edwin E. Robinson, a former truck driver, could see for the first time since he became blind as the result of a spectacular highway accident nine years ago.
"It (his sight) isn't completely restored," Robinson's wife, Doris, said. "But he can see straight in front of him, which he hasn't been able to do in nine years.
"You read about things like this, but you can't really believe them," she said.
Robinson was knocked to the ground by lightning Wednesday when he took shelter under a tree during an afternoon thunderstorm. After 20 minutes, he managed to climb to his feet, said Mrs. Robinson, who found him in his bedroom later that afternoon.
"I can see you! I can see you! I can see the house! I can read!" she quoted him as saying. She also said he was able to hear perfectly well without his hearing aid.
Dr. William F. Taylor examined Robinson yesterday and confirmed that he had regained both sight and hearing. Calling it "one for the books," Dr. Taylor said the rubber-soled shoes Robinson was wearing when he was struck by the lightning may have saved his life.
Robinson's ophthalmologist, Dr. Albert Moulton, of Portland, Ore., attributed the dramatic event to trauma.
"It was traumatic when he lost his sight, so maybe his sight was restored by this trauma. Anything is possible," Dr. Moulton said.
Mrs. Robinson said she was being deluged with calls from friends and well-wishers who heard about her husband's recovery.
b. 3-24-1:
KUWAIT -- Five Muslim fundamentalists offended by a "Hagar the Horrible" cartoon burst into the offices of an English-language newspaper Saturday and chased an editor out of the building at gunpoint.
The five were captured, one by a worker at the daily Arab Times and the others by police after a car chase, an Interior Ministry statement said. No one was injured.
The U.S. comic strip, about a boorish but lovable Viking and his eccentric family, showed Hagar on a hill saying: "I pray and pray, but you never answer me."
A voice from the clouds answers: "Sorry if you don't get through right away, keep trying. These days everyone wants to talk to me."
Many Muslims saw the cartoon as sacrilegious. A magazine published by a group of fundamentalist Sunni Muslims said the comic strip was "mocking God and communication between humans and their God."
The Al-Mujtama magazine accused the newspaper's non-Muslim employees of poking fun at Kuwait's laws and religion.
The newspaper ran an apology Thursday, 11 days after the cartoon appeared. It said the "inclusion of the cartoon was inappropriate but unintentional and done without malice."
"They took the mistake and turned it into a conspiracy," said the paper's American managing editor, Tadeusz Karwecki. "Everyone makes mistakes, but you don't go out and shoot people for them."
c. 2-24-3:
Jacques Bailly, a 14-year-old eighth-grade student from Denver, yesterday won the National Spelling Bee by correctly spelling "elucubrate."
Jacques got his chance when Paige Pipkin, a 12-year-old seventh grader from El Paso, Texas, missed on "glitch." She spelled it "glitsch."
After Jacques properly spelled "glitch," he breezed through "elucubrate" before pronouncer Richard Baker could provide the definition.
Jacques is no stranger to elucubration -- laborious work, especially at night or by candlelight.
"Well, you read a lot and you work a lot," he said, explaining his secret of success.
Jacques and Paige were the top of 112 finalists who came to Washington for the 53rd annual competition sponsored by Scripps Howard Newspapers.
Jacques spelled "auburn," "finesse," "maladroit," "nimiety," "juratory," "davit," "abecedarian," "frijoles," "blatherskite," "wassail" and "halcyon" to reach the final face-off.
Jacques won $1,000 and a loving cup. Paige won $500.
d. 4-48-1 with 4-30-1 underline:
WASHINGTON -- More than two-thirds of Americans believe television contributes to violence, erodes family values and fosters a distrust of government, according to a new poll released Saturday.
The public also is troubled by increasingly graphic portrayals of sex during prime time, said the poll, which will appear in the U.S. News & World Report issue on newsstands Monday.
Nearly 80 percent of Hollywood executives questioned by mail in a separate survey agreed there was a link between TV violence and violence in real life, but they were not nearly as concerned about TV's role in other social problems.
Fifty-three percent of the executives said TV contributed to distrust of government, and 46 percent thought it contributed to the decline of family values. Thirty-four percent believe TV played some role in America's divorce rate.
One thousand adults were interviewed for the poll, which had a margin of error of plus or minus 3 percent. U.S. News said 570 of the 6,500 Hollywood executives who received the mail surveys responded to them. "It is not a scientific survey, but the total number of responses was significant and suggests that many Hollywood leaders are concerned about trends in the television business," the magazine said.
Eighty-four percent of the general public said they were concerned about the relationship of extramarital sex on TV and real-life problems. In contrast, 43 percent of the Hollywood executives said they were concerned.
Seventy-five percent of the public said they were concerned about the portrayal of passionate encounters and heavy kissing on TV, compared to 28 percent of Hollywood leaders.
When asked about the solutions they would favor, 95 percent of both groups agreed that parental supervision was the most important step, the magazine said.
"Strong majorities also supported the installation of a V-chip on TV sets to allow parents to block out shows to which they object," the magazine said. "Eighty-three percent of the public backed the V-chip, and 62 percent of the Hollywood elite did."
To examine the kinds of messages the public receives over TV, the magazine looked at a week's worth of prime-time programs on ABC, CBS, NBC and the Fox networks in mid-March.
Of the 58 shows monitored, almost half contained sexual acts or references to sex, U.S. News said.
"Sexual innuendo and scatological humor are rampant even during the 8 p.m.-to-9 p.m. slot that used to be reserved for family-friendly programming," the magazine said.
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