Opinion No headline

Headline writers get no bylines, but these unsung, invisible, anonymous editors make newspaper stories sing. Without their imagination, papers would be bereft of the human spark — endless, rolling columns of grey text, factually correct, technically proper, but incapable of moving the human spirit. They may get no bylines, but sometimes they rise above the artisanal rubric of media to produce pop art.

Vinny Mussetto, who checked out of our universe this week, did not merely rise. He soared. He did skywriting. At the New York Post, he improvised on the long tradition of creative headlining in British tabloids to create an American flavour. Tonally, it’s like the difference between salt and vinegar and barbecue sauce. Thematically, American humour dotes on death while British humour shies from it. Mussetto’s greatest improvisations on the theme were “Granny Executed in her Pink Pyjamas” and the epic “Headless Body in Topless Bar”. Legend has it that the headline sprang fully armed from the mind of Vincent Mussetto while the story, which contained no sexual element, was still coming in on the ticker. Apparently, a reporter who was sent to the crime scene made it come true — she peered into the bar from behind the police line and saw a sign that promised topless dancing. The headline ran on the front page of the Post after the fact, and became a classic that is still taught in journalism schools.

Advertisement

Conscious of its status as a document of record, the New York Times ran the same story under the headline: “Owner of a bar is shot to death; suspect is held”. Bleak and colourless, compared with Mussetto’s sparkling firecracker. This week, the finest practitioner of his craft left this plane, to chase the great headline in the sky. Such effortless genius belongs in another world.