Bad headline

Got an Google alert for an AP story headlined, “Ecologists say unrestricted pumping will harm fish.”

The lede says: “Environmentalists say a federal judge’s order to temporarily allow unrestricted pumping in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta threatens to push endangered salmon into extinction.”

“Environmentalist” and “ecologist” are not the same thing. Some ecologists may be environmentalists, and some environmentalists may have been trained as ecologists. But the first term suggests activism while the second suggests unbiased science.

How does this happen? Reporters write stories and copy editors write headlines. This may seem illogical, but copy editors are the ones who design newspaper pages — you know, the kind that are printed on paper – and must incorporate headlines into those designs. (And by the way, this post is by no means an attack on copy editors. That’s what my wife does. And writing a good headline is a lot harder than it sounds.)

Still, it’s disappointing to see headlines like the one mentioned above. It’s crucial that the public understands the difference between an environmentalist who makes his living advocating on behalf of Chinook salmon, and an ecologist who makes his living counting and studying them — and is in the best position to determine whether the judge’s order will harm them.