Remember when a headline really was a headline?

Over the last few months, I’ve found myself with a bit more time than usual on my hands and inevitably, some of that time has been spent on social media. 😉

Facebook in particular has been a great source of entertainment to me while I’ve been out of action.  I love how my timeline gets filled with random news stories that really aren’t news at all.  My favourite example of this over the last few weeks has been the celebrity split of the year as Brad and Angelina parted ways with everything from people saying ‘I told you it wouldn’t last’ to ‘OMG how could that happen’ with a healthy dose of Jennifer Aniston and George Clooney quotes and photos mixed in.

That, along with a few other similar examples got me thinking about a book of my Dad’s that I used to love reading when I was younger.  I can’t for the life of me find it anywhere on t’internet to show you but it was the biggest book I’d ever seen, filled with newspaper front pages from 1900 up until it was printed around 1990 ish.  Honestly, I loved the book and could sit for ages reading various news headlines.  I read the headlines about all the big events, news from the war, space discovery – everything that made the front page of a particular newspaper that century!

I just wish I could find it to show you and actually to see if there was an updated version that I could buy for us now.  If you did see it then you’d realise that a headline in those days really was a headline.  There was no celebrity gossip (well maybe a little) and no sensationalising of stories like there is these days.

A page I often turned to first would be the sinking of the Titanic which genuinely fascinated me and led me to want to learn more about it.  Most people’s knowledge of the unsinkable ship comes from the film of the events but mine came from reading about it way before the film itself and it was thanks to this book sharing the headlines from the time it happened.

Can you think of a headline that’s impacted you in some way?

I’ve just taken a quiz written by SunLife  about some of the major headlines from the last 50 years I’ll be honest, I’m a bit gutted that I only got 6 out of 9 – I was fully expecting to be able to smugly tell you that I got 100% after my story above about my favourite book.

Seriously though, take the quiz if you have a minute as it’s a reminder of what news really is and more importantly, what it really isn’t!  I’d love to hear what your score is so do let me know in the comments how you do (unless you beat me, in which case you have my permission to lie and say you only scored five).

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