23/12/95
Journalist
Dies in Horrible Work Accident
Inviting
the public to write headlines for the newspaper seemed
like a good idea at the time.
"You did what?!"
"I --"
"For one lousy week I go on vacation and
I come back to find you in my chair.
You! A stinking comic, running The Jerusalem Goddam
Post. In no time at all you managed to make a mockery
of the proud journal this is. I can't believe you did
that!"
"But --"
"What happened to my faithful second-in-command?"
"Miluim."
"And Harry?"
"Also miluim."
"Judy?"
"Miluot."
"So they left you to put out this
paper. They should have known you'd pull an antic
like that. Tell me, when is your contract up?"
"Uh, never, sir. I'm a union man. Sir?"
The Editor-in-Chief burst a major artery in his
neck. "WHAT?"
"It seemed like a good idea at the time."
"And what time was that, when you thought
my plane crashed?"
I then explained that the regular headline-writer
had to fill in for his wife at the hairdresser's for
a week because she had to take care of her neighbor's
sister's two kids a cat and three plants when the woman's
husband ran off with his sister-in-law's best friend
Bracha, nebich, she still limps after that terrible
accident with the broken egg on the makolet floor, you
remember, we had the story on Page 2 last summer.
"You idiot!" said the E-in-C.
As if it was my fault. "Sir," I said,
gathering courage, "I take full responsibility."
It didn't mean anything, of course, but it sounded gallant.
"Moron!" he roared as he perused
the stack of a week's worth of newspapers on his desk.
I felt that he was getting the upper hand of
this editorial meeting. "Sir," I ventured,
"wouldn't this discussion be rather more civil
if you stopped refering to me in italics all the time?
It makes me nervous."
It really wasn't my fault. The first day of the
Editor's absence, nobody else wanted to do the job,
and I wasn't doing anything all day anyway, so I was
made Emergency Editor-in-Chief. And then this story
came in, just before deadline, something about Dinitz
swearing he didn't do it. Nobody could think of a headline
until Amos, the kid who delivers the pizza, came in
carrying a mushroom with double cheese. We called him
over. He took one look at the story and muttered that
the guy was a dirty Ashkenazi thief and he should be
strung up by the nostrils. Great, I thought, there's
our head:
'Dirty
Ashkenazi Thief'
Swears
He's Innocent
(I decided to leave out the stuff about the nostrils.)
The E-in-C stared at the headline for a long
while, wearing an expression that looked like a fat,
hairy fly had just flown into his mouth and was still
buzzing halfway down his gullet.
"No spelling mistakes," I pointed out. "And
it fit."
But the Editor opined that Amos was not a very
credible judge of character. When he finally let go
of my throat, I conceded that maybe he had a point.
He looked at me in that italic way again. "So
Amos was writing our headlines all week," he said.
"Oh, no, we paid him for that one and haven't
ordered pizza since. But it gave me the idea. 'Editor-in-Chief,'
I said to myself, 'there must be lots of people who'd
like to write headlines for the paper.' You know, community
involvement and all that. So I put a big ad on the front
page. 'Be a Famous Journalist! No Experience Necessary!'
Well, sir, hundreds came, thousands."
"Do tell."
"We set up chairs in the newsroom,"
I continued excitedly. "Everybody took turns. It
was great fun, you know, like a game show. At the end
of each evening, whoever came up with the best headline
won a free newspaper."
The Editor exploded. "You gave away a free
newspaper?"
"Yeah, well most people said they weren't
going to buy the paper anyway, so it was no great loss.
And anyway, we made a lot of money with the refreshment
stand."
"You sold drinks in my newsroom?!"
"Yup. And felafel, too. I took the city
reporter off his beat to man the stand."
The Editor swallowed a pill, and then another,
shuddered a bit, and then relaxed completely. He picked
up another newspaper from the stack, put it down, poured
himself a brimming glass of brandy, downed it, and picked
up the paper again. He muttered something that sounded
like the headline on the Monday Page 1 peace talks story.
No
Progress in Negotiations
Results
in Boring Article
"Astutely accurate headline, you will agree,
sir."
"Who gave you the authority to change our
style and use capital letters?"
"Well, I was Editor-in-Chief at the
time."
I offered him another pill. He took it. He turned
the page.
Coalition
Crisis Looms
"That's news?"
"That's what the story was about."
"I see. For six days it loomed, and in six
consecutive editions the headline read 'Coalition Crisis
Looms.'"
"Consistency, sir."
"Like your daily weather report." He
leafed through the papers.
Hot
Today
Hot
Today Also
Hot
Today God Willing
Damn
Hot Today
Today
Is It Going To Be Hot
"What can I say? It was hot every day."
He picked up another paper.
Hot
Today As Intifada Continues,
Likud
Blasts Labor, Stocks Fall,
Peace
Talks Stall, Labor Slams Likud,
Maccabi
Lose And Coalition Crisis Looms
"Oh, that one. Tuesday's lead story. We
didn't have enough copy to fill the paper so I cobbled
together some stuff from the archives. An interesting
solution, I thought."
Then he noticed the piece on the foreign news
page, the Reuter feature on the sexual revolution in
Moscow.
The
Russians Are Coming
The
Russians Are Coming
He looked at me as if I'd just punched his mother.
"You put this headline in the newspaper that Gershon
Agron founded?"
"Some guy from Ramat Gan won a free copy
for that one."
He opened the Friday paper. "Oh my God."
"What?"
EYE
ON THE MEDIA
By
SAM ORBAUM
"That's my column!"
"Didn't think you'd mind."
"And the headline?"
"Didn't think you'd notice."
Media-Baiting
'Post' Columnist
Suffers
From Persecution Complex
"I thought you'd be pleased, sir; journalists
the world over pray to be featured in your column. It
gives them, you know, credibility in media circles,
when you crap all over them. So I figured you shouldn't
be any less honored than the rest of them. This'll make
you famous."
The Editor-in-Chief put the paper on his desk.
I looked at him. He looked at me. I smiled. He didn't.
"Son," he said, sounding oddly like
my father did the day I traded his car for a new three-speed
bicycle. "I wonder if you'd mind doing me a tiny
favor. A lot of people want to know what happened to
this newspaper while I was on vacation. I don't think
I could possibly tell them. You tell them. Sit
down and write your next -- and may God see fit to make
it your last -- column. Write about this little meeting
we've just had."
"But sir, I'm a humor columnist."
"And I'm Editor-in-Chief again. Do it."
"Yes, sir."
"Just one more thing. This time, I'll
write the headline."
