Alternative best headlines

December 3, 2015 • 12:30 pm

by Matthew Cobb

Yesterday we claimed that a headline involving frogs was the best headline in the history of the world. This piece of hyperbole was soon disputed on Tw*tter:

https://twitter.com/DrLindseyFitz/status/672149263627997184/photo/1

https://twitter.com/DougSaunders/status/672150534837571584/photo/1

The full story behind the frog headline:

https://twitter.com/wunderkamercast/status/672153379439689728/photo/1

 

 

23 thoughts on “Alternative best headlines”

  1. I am trying to remember the names involved in the infamous Cheshire “strapdictomy” case of a few weeks ago.
    Frist Post!

  2. My all-time favorite:

    ALIEN NEWSPAPER FOUND!!!

    (accompanied by photo of a newspaper written in English with picture of a “gray” beneath the headline)

  7. I’ve always loved the headline:

    “DWARF RAPES NUN; FLEES IN UFO”

    but alas, it’s only the title of a novel about tabloid journalism. I read the book a while back, but only remember the title. I think I liked it well enough, though.

    1. This calls to mind Denis Diderot’s La Religieuse, Memoirs of a Nun, the scandalous novel about a nun who escapes the horrors of the convent. Diderot concocted it as a joke to fool another French philosophe. And fool him it did because pious philosophe offered the fictive woman asylum. A great read and a superb joke.

  8. I used to collect newspaper advertising billboards that featured interesting headlines. I think my favourite is “All Black has brain scan.”

    You need to know that an All Black is a member of the national rugby team. No word on whether the scan revealed he had a brain.

  9. Best headline I have ever seen was from (of all places) a German tabloid. When the former boss of Bayern Munich football team was somewhat surprisingly given a jail sentence for tax evasion, they ran the headline “Der Runde muss ins Eckige” — a wordplay on a football saying meaning “the round thing has to go the square-ish thing”. The guy is kind of rotund!
    http://www.sueddeutsche.de/medien/presseschau-zum-hoeness-urteil-der-runde-muss-ins-eckige-1.1912198-8

      1. Because tabloids aren’t usually noted for smart headlines. It is often rumored that Germans lack a sense of humor but it is not true and was not meant to come across like that!

  10. When I was a kid we would sometimes go “frog fishing” at Lake Stickney north of Seattle. It was known for having very large frogs (not that we ever caught any). Our equipment was a fishing pole with a piece of red flannel attached to the hook. I wonder if this choice of bait was based upon the Pennsylvania farmer’s story?

  11. Going back a bit, how about:

    “Too Many Basques in one Exit”

    often regarded as the most callous, though clever, headline ever.

    It relates to an incident in the Spanish civil war in the 1930s. I don’t know the details, but I assume it involved crowds of Basque refugees trying to escape bombing raids.

  12. If I sub, I’m sure I’ll eventually remember one of the ones I thought was great at the time…

  15. God Isn’t Fixing This.

    I think the Daily News may have just printed the best headline ever, tho it is sad that simply telling the obvious truth is that startling.

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