DENNIS MYERS Against the Grain Advertisement

Back in 1980, governors Jerry Brown of California and Robert List of Nevada met in Incline Village to discuss the problems involving protecting the ecology of Lake Tahoe.

A journalism group took advantage of the gathering of reporters to hold a lunch meeting of Nevada journalists and invited List's aide Bill Phillips to address the group.

Phillips used the occasion to vent about headlines. He rarely had occasion to complain about news stories, he told the group, but the headlines over those reports were frequently misleading.

After that luncheon there was a joint news conference of Brown and List at which the Nevada governor said he would consider calling the Nevada Legislature into special session, but only IF a list of conditions was met, which would become known in succeeding weeks.

The next day a Reno newspaper carried the headline "List to call special session."

I was reminded of that incident last week when the Wall Street Journal carried a T.W. Farnum story on Harry Reid's reelection prospects under the headline "Sen. Reid Hits the Ground Running in Uphill Re-Election Bid." The piece was a straightforward pros-and-cons article covering the senator's assets and liabilities.

When the Huffington Post picked up the article, the headline became "Harry Reid Faces Uphill Re-Election Bid."

Both those headlines cannot accurately reflect the article's content.

Headlines are a constant source of vexation to the reporters who write the articles under them. Although, it can also be said, it gives reporters an excuse. Since reporters don't normally write their own headlines, they can blame it on the headline writer.

In "Citizen Kane," Kane claimed that "If the headline is big enough, it makes the news big enough." It doesn't really, of course, but an unrepresentative headline is more likely to be used in a 30-second political commercial than one accurately reflectung its story.

There is a whole lexicon of words that seldom appear anywhere except in headlines, such as "brandish" and "bizarre."

One headline-writing textbook (meant for both news and public relations people -- news releases also carry headlines) offers "The top 30 most-successful headline words!" Many years ago, a New York Times headline said, "My favorite word is 'coed.' When you see 'coed,' people want to buy the paper." That word may have passed from usage, but many others have taken its place. "New clichés are being made," Washington Post national editor Harry Rosenfeld once said. "Shouldn't we be making them?"

Some headlines can become famous, locally or nationally. "FORD TO CITY: DROP DEAD" is still talked about decades after Gerald Ford promised a veto of aid to New York City. Reporters at the Las Vegas Sun grumbled in 1984 about Hank Greenspun's "Long live the king" headline over a story on Ronald Reagan's renomination. In Sparks, a story about a local judge filing for election to a different judgeship to avoid facing a formidable opponent in his own judgeship race prompted the headline, "Shouweiler weenies out."

Some headlines have a way of getting at the truth of situations even when it's unintended. The San Francisco Chronicle's 2003 headline, "Bush says he'll fight for constitutional ban on unions," is in this category.

Then there are the embarrassing obvious ones: "Hijacking Was Surprise to Passengers" (AOL.com).

As more and more news goes online, there is one new advantage -- those embarrassing headlines can be corrected, something that couldn't be done on newsprint. And the internet provides all new opportunities for headline writing -- one firm offers the "Top 422 digg.com attention grabbing words."

The real lesson here is the headline shouldn't scare readers off from a story, since the story may be better (or worse) than the headline.