Jonathan Sale looks at how ‘matters in Rhodesia’ led to the first newspaper headline – and fears an art may be lost


Have I got Evening News for you


U


nder the masthead there was a proud boast: “The Evening News has the largest circulation of any evening newspaper in the world.”. At least, it was until Wednesday


July 8, 1896. The now defunct London newspaper, which older readers may remember because, like me, they made a few quid from the odd tip-off to the newsdesk, made history on that date. In the place of those usual 14 words were eight new ones: ‘Matters in Rhodesia Grow Worse Instead of Better’. Yes, a sub could have sharpened it up: once one has stated that matters are deteriorating, a reader will get the general idea that they are not improving. However, those were early days. This Rhodesian report has been hailed as Britain’s first front-page headline above a news story. One could argue over the winner in this race; a rival paper had previously produced ‘Many Happy Returns of the Day – Wedding of Professor Stuart MP’ but this had little news value. Over in the US, the Chicago Times had introduced banner headlines nearly three years earlier, although these initially accompanied not news stories but editorials such as ‘Let Congress Stop Talking and Act’ – a fairly timeless theme. The Evening News itself had been toying for


two years with headlines but these tended to be of a mere two-column width. This new one was perched over five whole columns. And what a long-running story Rhodesia (as was) and Zimbabwe (as is) was to be. However, the concept of the headline as a work of art and craft may be on the way out, according to one of the former editors whose brains I picked for this piece.


Readers drawn in by those pioneering eight


words on that Thursday in July would have scanned the front page for the accompanying article on Rhodesian matters. The first column contains nothing but small ads for financial and


16 | theJournalist


other services. The second column is similar, including an ad for ‘wind pills’ and another for ‘distressing diseases of the skin’, illustrated with a line drawing. The third column has an actual article but its subject is ‘man-hunting’ by police; one suspect has left clues that lead police to search for him in Paris but later sends them a mocking postcard from New York. An intriguing yarn but nothing about the Rhodesian crisis. The fourth column brings ‘Gossip of the Day’,


which is that Prince Charles of Denmark has been listening to parliamentary debates. On the Rhodesian crisis perhaps? No, on the Budget Bill. In the nibs: a German has invented small bombs which cyclists can chuck when dogged by dogs. No joy in the fifth column, either. ‘Our Short Story – a Whistling Girl’ is two columns of women saying things like “I was such a goose just now.” On the subject of geese, the final column, entitled ‘Items concerning Events of the Day and Things in General’ features the second reading of the Agricultural Rating Bill.


Page two of the four-page paper (a government tax on newspapers was calibrated according to the pagination, so they were very thin) brings us ‘The Seamy Side. As Revealed at the London Police Courts’ plus the final heats at the Henley races. It is only on page three – more than halfway through the issue – that we reach the actual piece: ‘Rhodesia. Grave news from Fort Salisbury. Zulus and Colonial Kaffirs are armed with assegais and spears, and enjoy the fighting.’ Furthermore, ‘Provisions of all kinds [are] at Famine Prices’ to such an extent that one starving man killed and ate his pointer, giving a new meaning to the term dog food.


War, peace and other bloopers


“RUMINATING ABOUT great Daily Express headlines, one can’t help reviving the biggest blooper of all,” says Richard Addis, who edited the paper from 1995 to 1999. “September 30th 1938 – and


the giant single word ‘Peace’ across the top of page one.” Unfortunately the correct word


would have been ‘War’, which, in the same month only a year later, Britain declared on Germany. “I guess it makes my own worst


bungle pale by comparison,” he says.


That was to misspell a vital


word when he was working for the Rome Daily American in 1990. ‘Aradaft attacks US’, it read in 72-point bold capitals. This must have been a surprise to


Yasser Arafat, who was under the impression that he was the perpetrator in question. “My own most famous Express


headline, of which I am rather ashamed now, was on Thursday 4th September 1997: ‘Show us you care’ over the photo of Her Maj.” It was the first headline to sum up public rage at the supposed insensitivity of the Queen after Princess Diana died. The Washington Post followed it with a splash: ‘Can the royals survive?’ Well, Addis points out, “They did.”


THE PRINT COLLECTOR / ALAMY STOCK PHOTO / JOHN FROST NEWSPAPERS / ALAMY STOCK PHOTO


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