Enough With The Subheads, Already!

There seems to be a belief on the part of newspaper and magazine editors that the people who buy their product hate to read, writes Jim Walsh. This would seem like an inherent contradiction, since the consumer who buys a periodical must presumably know that s/he will have to read it to really get full value for her/his money. But the creeping use of subheads – those little in-story boldface descriptors that only exist to tell you in advance what the words in the upcoming paragraph will say – is an unquestionable assault on serious writing, and serious reading, and Walsh isn’t going to stand for it.