Exercise: Writing headlines and summaries 02

May 21, 2013 | By Jim Stovall | Filed in: exercises, headlines, teaching journalism.

This exercise includes two of the stories in exercise 7.4, page 187, of Writing for the Mass Media (7th ed).

Instructors: The purpose of this exercise is to provide students with some practice in writing headlines and summaries for the web.
Students: Write headlines and summaries for the stories below. You should read Headline writing for the web and Writing summaries here on JPROF.com before starting this exercise.

Refer to the headline and summary tips to the right as you do your work.

No headline can be more than 60 characters long.

You should limit your summaries to about 50 words. You have a maximum of 350 characters in the space allotted for the summary.

Once you start, do not refresh your page while you are working or you may lose your work.


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Story 1 – Accident at Subway Central

Headline


You are limited to 60 characters for this headline.

Summary


Characters Left

A restaurant patron died of a heart attack today after an automobile crashed through the front window of the restaurant where he was dining.

John Barker, 59, a resident of the Roaring Creek Community, died at Memorial Hospital. Barker was sitting in the Subway Central Restaurant shortly after noon today when a car crashed through the large plate glass window.

The car was driven by Annie Coulter, 82, of Midville. Police said Coulter reported that the brakes on her car failed as she swerved to avoid a pedestrian. Coulter was hurt in the accident.

Barker was not hit by the car but did receive minor cuts from flying glass. Moments after the accident, however, Barker complained about pains in his chest. He was then taken to Memorial Hospital.

No other injuries were reported


Story 2 – School system restaurant

Headline


You are limited to 60 characters for this headline.


Characters Left

After a decade of running The Eatery on State Street, the Ticonderoga County school system has decided to get out of the restaurant business.

The restaurant, where special-education students came during the school day to work and learn about the food-service industry, will close at the end of this school year.

he move will save the school system $20,000 to $50,000 a year, according to school spokesman Randall Styles, whose office in the downtown Franklin Pierce Building is just upstairs from the restaurant.

“It will certainly save us money to close The Eatery,” said Styles, who ate lunch at the conveniently located restaurant almost daily for the past three years. “But it’s something that is not needed anymore because we can provide the same level of instruction at other facilities.”

The school system has relationships with some 80 other Midville-area restaurants, where special-education students can get experience preparing food and waiting on customers, according to Ray Coward, who runs the school program.

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