Fleeing And Avoiding

 If you’ve written for a newspaper, magazine or any other publication—whether in print or online—you have had this experience: You covered an event or researched a topic. You verified your sources and took care to be fair and balanced. Oh, and you took care not to do violence to the Englsh language (or whatsoever language you write).

Then someone tacks on a headline that is silly, confusing or clumsy—or has little or no discernible relation to your article. 

At nearly all publications, articles and their headlines are written by different people—who may never meet each other. I suspect that as often as not, the headline writers are working with a one- or two-sentence summary of your 750-word article.

I thought about the frustration I felt upon seeing incongruous, incompetent or simply inane headlines on the world-changing (mmm hmm) exposés I penned when I saw this:

Drug dealer avoids jail despite fleeing on bicycle from pursuing police.

So what was the wayward wordsmith trying to say?  To me, “flee” implies a successful escape: For example, my ex’s family fled the Castro regime. I would therefore think that if Bradley Axford managed to flee police in Warrington (Northwich, UK), he wouldn’t have been concerned with jail time.  Or, conversely, he would be in jail if he hadn’t fled. 

Or would his situation have been different had he fled, or tried to flee, by any means other than the black bicycle he rode through a red light. (I have to admit I liked seeing that detail in the article, even if it was meant to sway readers’ opinions against him.)

Oh well. I guess I shouldn’t be too hard on whoever crafted that headline.  After all, that person probably was underinformed or underpaid, or both.

Little Town, Little Criminals

Ask newspaper writers what annoys or frustrates them most, and the answers will include headlines.  My newspaper articles certainly weren't masterpieces of literature, but it drove me crazy when it was led off with something illiterate, clumsy or simply inaccurate.

So I felt for Nicole Rosenthal, a staff writer for Patch.  Her otherwise-good article began with a title that, while it caught my eye--for a reason I'll mention in a moment--it set a very different tone than, I believe, Ms. Rosenthal intended.

"Aberdeen, Matawan Kids Are Violating Bicycle Laws, Police Say." Matawan is a village in the northern Monmouth County, New Jersey township of Aberdeen.  Until 1977, the whole township was known as Matawan.  Just one township--which, like Matawan, includes a few villages--stands between Aberdeen and Middletown Township, where I spent my high-school years and first became a dedicated cyclist.  In fact, some of my early two-wheel treks outside Middletown took me through Matawan and Aberdeen.

(Snark alert) Li'l Lawbreakers!  (Photo by Rachel Sokol)

Then, as now, the township's and village's streets, aside from Routes 34, 35 and 79, are lined with neat homes of people who commute to New York (the railroad station is one of the busiest in New Jersey) and their kids who are like suburban kids in other places--which is to say that if you take away their electronic devices, they're probably not so different from the kids I knew in Middletown.

According to the article, police have received "numerous" complaints about children "disregarding" the state's bicycle safety laws.  Well, since most young people don't think very much about the laws are--if, indeed, they even have a vague idea of what they are--I don't think they "disregard" them.  Perhaps "violate" is a better word:  After all, people violate all sorts of laws and rules they don't realize they're violating.   

So what sorts of laws do the youngsters of Matawan-Aberdeen violate? Well, from what the article says, some weren't wearing helmets, which the Garden State requires for riders under 17 years of age. (No such law existed when I was that age; in fact, people would look at you askance if you wore a helmet.)  But the majority of complaints were about kids riding in the "middle" of roadways.

Indeed, the law in New Jersey, like its counterparts in most jurisdictions of the United States, says that cyclists have to right as far to the right as possible.  (If that's an attempt to influence our politics, it didn't work with me! ;-)) So, I guess some people would define any other part of the road as "the middle."  If that's the case, were the kids endangering themselves or holding up traffic--or popping wheelies, as kids have been doing for about as long as they've been riding bicycles?  

(If they were riding in the "middle" of the road on Routes 34, 35 or 79, people wouldn't have been filing complaints; they would have been filling out hospital forms or making funeral arrangements!)

Anyway, I saw the headline and wondered whether that town where I rode past other kids like the one I was in Middletown--white, suburban and, if they were anything like me, rather docile even if they were capable of being smart-asses--was suddenly turning out menaces to society.

He Didn't Have A Phantom Condition. He Was Assaulted.

When I wrote for newspapers, a few things frustrated me.  Among them were politicians and other officials who'd talk around my questions.  Another was the constraints one editor put on me and other writers.  So, as I complained to another writer, "I can write about cops and robbers but I can't write about the real crimes."

But nothing twisted my panties or chamois bike short liners (remember those?) more than headline writers.  They'd come up with phrasings that, sometimes said something different from, or even the exact opposite of, what my article described.  Or sometimes what they wrote things that someone, especially if they came from a different generation, culture or other life experience might hear differently from what was intended.

I saw an example of this today:  "Boy Beaten and Bruised in Bicycle Face Attack at LI School Parking Lot:  Cops."  

Now, perhaps I'm a bit of a geek, at least in this sense:  I can say, without boasting, that I probably know more about the history of bicycles and bicycling than anyone who's not a specialist in that field.  So when I saw "Bicycle Face," I immediately thought of the rationale conservatives during the 1885-1905 Bike Boom gave for keeping women off bicycles.  They believed that the rigors of being out in public, in rain and wind and sun, and of simply being on a bicycle, twisted their pretty little heads into what they called "Bicycle Face."

Now, of course, with all due respect to Long Island law enforcement officials, I doubt that their training includes ways of recognizing Bicycle Face--or that most of them have even heard of the term, even if they are cyclists.  And I think it's even less likely that some random thug (the victim is a 13-year-old boy; the perp is believed to be a good bit older and six feet tall) would attack someone for having "Bicycle Face," though, perhaps I can imagine using the phrase as a schoolyard taunt.

Now, I don't mean to make light of a boy being bashed in the face with a bicycle.  No one should have to endure that, and it upsets me that something that can be such a force for good and a source of so much pleasure can be used to commit violence against another living being.  My heart goes out to that boy and his loved ones.

But, as a writer, I also abhor crimes against journalism and the English language.  A much more accurate--and, if I do say so myself, snappier--headline might've been: LI Man Slams Bike Against Boy's Face.

Bicycles, Pedestrians and Stormwater

When I wrote for a local newspapers, I experienced the same frustration incurred by other journalistic scribes:  I wrote the articles, but someone else wrote the headlines.  So my carefully-crafted creations were cratered by careless hacks who tacked on  non-sequiturs and puns worse than any you've seen on this blog!

So I feel for whoever wrote the Kirkland Reporter article bearing this title:

Bicycle, Pedestrian and Stormwater Improvements on Kirkland's Market Street begin this week.

When I saw that, I wondered:  How does one improve stormwater?  And how does one improve stormwater and a pedestrian and bicycle at the same time?  

For all I know, it might be an idea that changes the course of history.  Or it might be one of those loopy ideas young people are coming up with now recreational marijuana is legal in Washington State!