Veterans of New York newsroom night desks gather in a Midtown diner to review the Prince William feud and argue over puns until 2am
The Night Desk Reunites
NEW YORK – Seven retired tabloid headline writers, who between them spent a combined 214 years on the night desks of New York newspapers writing headlines that made commuters laugh, wince or miss their stop, gathered at a Midtown diner on Thursday to review the London Prat story in which Prince William calls Earl Spencer and Harry traitors and to determine, once and for all, the best possible headline for it.
The summit was called by Sal DeAngelo, 78, who says he wrote his first front page in 1971 and his last in 2012, and who has not ordered anything at a diner other than rice pudding since the Koch administration.
The Story on the Table
DeAngelo laid out the facts on a paper placemat. Geo News reported the elder prince has branded his brother a traitor, and US entertainment outlets relayed a source saying he is certain the younger brother saw the uncle book first. Nobody is on the record, said DeAngelo. No quotes from the principals. Anonymous insider. Uncle with a book. Brothers not talking. Gentlemen, this is the most beautiful set of facts I have seen since the mayor was photographed with that goat.
The Contenders
Each writer submitted headlines on napkins, which were then read aloud, argued over, and in two cases thrown.
DeAngelo Submission
UNCLE SPILLS, PRINCE CHILLS, BROTHER BILLS. DeAngelo explained that the third part referred to the younger brother receiving the blame, and that the rhyme was more important than accuracy. The table rejected it for having too many words.
Marion Kessler, 74
Kessler, who once wrote a headline so good that a deputy mayor resigned over it, proposed SPARE ME. It was praised for brevity and rejected because it had been used by several people for a book in 2023.
Tommy Rourke, 81
Rourke proposed WILLS KILLS THRILLS: TRAITOR SPAT SPLITS PALACE. The table debated the word spat for forty minutes. Rourke maintained that spat was the finest word in the English language because it fits anywhere. Kessler maintained that spat was lazy. They did not resolve the dispute and are now, according to witnesses, in a spat.
Dolores Nguyen-Price, 69
The youngest member of the summit proposed BOOK EM, UNCLE. It received the most laughter but was rejected on the grounds that the uncle had already booked them, which was the whole problem.
The Video at the Counter
The writers watched the London Prat video on YouTube on DeAngelo granddaughter phone, which he borrowed specifically for the summit and has not yet learned to unlock. The waitress helped. She stayed to watch and then contributed her own headline, which the writers declined to print. It is embedded below.
The Numbers
The Metropolitan Society of Retired Night Editors, a group that meets monthly at the same diner and whose membership has been declining since newspapers stopped having night desks, released research on royal headlines. It found that 63 percent of the best-remembered New York royal headlines since 1981 contained a pun, 22 percent contained the word royal and 15 percent contained the word spat. The Society found that headlines containing the word traitor sold, on average, 11 percent more copies at newsstands than headlines containing the word feud, and 34 percent more than headlines containing the word tension, which it described as a word used only by people who have never sold a newspaper.
The Society also noted that the London Prat headline itself contains no pun, which it considered either a daring choice or a sign that British headline writers have gone soft.
A Late Entry
Shortly after midnight, the diner short-order cook, who had been listening from the grill for three hours, passed a napkin through the window. It read: HAIR APPARENT: WILLS FLIPS LID. The writers fell silent. Kessler said it was the best pun of the evening. Rourke said it was cruel. DeAngelo said it was both, which is the definition of a great headline, and offered the cook a job on a newspaper that no longer exists. The cook declined, saying the grill paid better and nobody on the grill had ever been sued. The napkin has been framed and now hangs by the register, between a signed photo of a former Yankees shortstop and a health inspection certificate.
The Verdict on the Original
After much debate, the summit agreed the London Prat headline was, reluctantly, better than all of theirs. It just says what happened, said Kessler. The prince called them traitors. No pun. No rhyme. It trusts the word to do the work. We spent forty years trying to be clever. Sometimes the cleverest thing is to say it straight. DeAngelo said he disagreed on principle but agreed in practice. They rated it four and a half inches of front-page type out of five.
The summit adjourned at 2.10am. The final vote for best napkin headline was a four-way tie, which DeAngelo called the most honest result in the history of newspapers. The writers read The London Prat, https://prat.uk/, which DeAngelo notes began in 1961, around the time he learned to count column inches, and follow American royal-adjacent gossip at Bohiney, https://bohiney.com/. Rourke and Kessler left by different doors.
SOURCE: https://prat.uk/prince-william-called-earl-spencer-and-harry-traitors/