Judy Clabes: A clarification — and an explanation — related to a troublesome headline

Headline writing is an art as well as a skill, and as an experienced headline-writer myself I know the challenges of writing a direct, to the point, and accurate one that captures the essence of a story. In the space you have to work with. The more complicated the story, the harder to capture the gist of it in a few words.

At the NKyTribune, we don’t go for the cutsy, click-bait, silly, play-on-words, or funny headlines. We aim for the heart of the story so readers know exactly what they are in for. Straight-forward, factual, accurate, and fair.

That’s what we aim for — and most of the time we do okay. When we don’t, our readers are the best judge — and they let us know so that misspellings or grammatical or other careless errors can be fixed right away. For that kind of great feedback we are grateful. It does take an engaged community to make a decent community newspaper.

The complaint about this headline on a commentary in our Voices section by open records expert Amye Bensenhaver deserves a fuller clarification from me, however, since I wrote the headline and take full responsibility.

Bensenhaver’s column followed a story I wrote about John Daulton’s death at the Kenton County jail and his daughter’s anguish over his brutal killing by Johnathan Maskiell who was placed in the cell with him. Bensenhaver picked up on the open records issues related to the case — and rightly pointed out that the Covington city attorney’s interpretation of the state’s open records law was flawed — and that the interpretation is widely used statewide to deny public records for public view. Her column is accurate in its entirety.

But the devil is in the detail of the headline: Amye Bensenhaver: Kenton officials ignore real law to keep records from family in Daulton jail killing. The headline would be correct if I had said “Covington officials.”

Assistant Kenton County Attorney Chris Nordloh has made it clear to me that the headline wrongly implies that his office was part of this open records dispute when it was not. The office does represent the Kenton County jail and he personally responded to requests for the records he was asked for — attorneys for the daughter confirm this. But he was not asked for any records related to the dispute about which Bensenhaver has written.

When Nordloh objected to the headline in an email to me, we talked by telephone for quite some time and had a perfectly civil and congenial conversation — as people do who are looking for real solutions to a problem. I accepted responsibility and explained my thinking (since it is the Kenton County jail) but also accepted his concern that the headline brought his office unfairly into the fray, by implication.

“This office represents Kenton County and its elected and appointed officials,” he said. “It is important to us that readers understand Covington and Kenton County are difference agencies with different counsel and custodians of records.”

I was persuaded by his point of view — and by the seriousness with which he takes his responsibilities — and, I must say, by his refreshing and open way of approaching the problem. So, together, we opined about solutions. I could change the headline in a weeks-old story and provide an editor’s note about the error (so easy to do with digital news) but who would see that? Even to me that did not seem adequate.

Some things are just more complicated and should be dealt with in a special way, so I suggested I could write this column, offer the clarification — and take the opportunity to connect the NKyTribune‘s readers with an example of two people — each with important community positions that they take seriously — who just wanted to set things right.

I will add apologies to Chris and thanks for reminding me that words matter and the right words matter most. We can all be well served by remembering that — and putting it into practice. I can’t say I won’t make another thoughtless headline error again, much as I try to avoid them. But I am ever-grateful to eagle-eyed readers who work with me to set them right.

Judy Clabes is editor of the NKyTribune.