Headlines

[cactuswatcher]

US Navy Poised to Take Ownership of Its Largest Warship abcnews

Being an editor and writing headlines is an important responsibility even in this era of the Internet when the headlines don't have to both fit and fill a specific spot on a newspaper. Editors should have experience and a broad knowledge of a lot of subjects. Most of all they should read the article for which they are writing a headline and not make assumptions that are not appropriate. The person who wrote this headline doesn't know squat about the Navy and its ships, and didn't take a second to check whether what they were intending to write made sense. The article clearly states the ship is the largest *destroyer*. The leap from that to the largest warship is both dramatic and inappropriate. As big as it is, the new destroyer Zumwalt is dwarfed by every aircraft carrier in the fleet!

Changing the subject: Take a look at the second paragraph of the article and see who the captain of the Zumwalt is!

Comments

[dlgood.livejournal.com]

They did come around and correct the headline later...

[cactuswatcher.livejournal.com]

...with a rewritten article. If you click the abcnews link above the old one is still there.

In case someone missed it due to the second article, James Kirk is the Captain.

[dlgood.livejournal.com]

When i get home i'll get you the direct link from the AP website. They constantly update articles there... repost on other sites can often be stable.

And he is the second Capt Kirk in the Navy I've covered.

[dlgood.livejournal.com]

Here's the link to the AP's correction:

http://bigstory.ap.org/article/e3e4813eb2c84e4980517ae9d46564d3/us-navy-poised-take-ownership-its-largest-warship (http://bigstory.ap.org/article/e3e4813eb2c84e4980517ae9d46564d3/us-navy-poised-take-ownership-its-largest-warship)