Journ. 133: Prof. Craig: Headline Exercise, Part 1
For today's exercise, here are the groups:
1 2 3 4 Jordan Soto
Maya Pettiford
Israel ArchieAgustin Tapia
Iber Moreno
Lizeth Palma CuestaJannifer Yin
Diego MacaraegAngela Nguyen
Larry LarkinFor this exercise you will choose ANY FIVE of the stories listed below, and provide the following for each:
- Five to 10 key words about the topic that could be included in a headline
- A suggestion for one or more standard headlines
- A suggestion for one or more creative headlines
You will be placed into groups to create these, and we will reconvene in a few minutes to discuss them. Please save these into a document -- you'll need them for the second part of the headline assignment.
- President Joe Biden has warned people in Florida to evacuate as a "matter of life and death" ahead of category four Hurricane Milton's landfall in the state.
Milton has weakened slightly from a category five, but is still packing ferocious winds of up to 145mph (233km/h) after brushing past the northern edge of Mexico's Yucatan peninsula.
The storm is expected to slam into the heavily populated city of Tampa Bay with full force on Wednesday night, less than two weeks after the state was hit by the devastating Hurricane Helene.
- Russian state media company VGTRK came under a hacker attack on Oct. 7, disrupting online broadcasts of Rossiya-1 and Rossiya-24 channels.
The cyberattack was carried out by Ukrainian hackers as a way to "congratulate" Russian President Vladimir Putin on his 72nd birthday, an undisclosed government source told Reuters.
"Our state media holding, one of the largest, has faced an unprecedented hacker attack on its digital infrastructure," Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov told the media.
- More than a dozen states and the District of Columbia have filed lawsuits against TikTok on Tuesday, alleging the popular short-form video app is harming youth mental health by designing its platform to be addictive to kids.
The lawsuits stem from a national investigation into TikTok, which was launched in March 2022 by a bipartisan coalition of attorneys general from many states, including New York, California, Kentucky and New Jersey. All of the complaints were filed in state courts.
At the heart of each lawsuit is the TikTok algorithm, which powers what users see on the platform by populating the app’s main “For You” feed with content tailored to people’s interests. The lawsuits also emphasize design features that they say make children addicted to the platform, such as the ability to scroll endlessly through content, push notifications that come with built-in “buzzes” and face filters that create unattainable appearances for users.
- OWENTON, Ky. — Three crew members were killed when a medical helicopter heading to pick up a patient crashed in Kentucky, authorities said.
The crash was reported Monday evening in Owenton near state Highway 22, Kentucky State Police said in a news release. Troopers determined that an Air Evac Lifeteam flight crashed, killing the three personnel aboard. They were identified by police as Gale Alleman, Bethany Aicken and James Welsh.
The Grant County-based crew was en route to pick up a patient when the crash happened, Air Evac Lifeteam said in a statement posted on social media.
- BLOOMINGTON, Ind. -- Indiana University suspended the Kappa Kappa Gamma sorority Tuesday evening following reports of alleged hazing incidents published that morning.
A 19-year-old student alleged that her pledge class was hazed by older sisters last year during the chapter’s Big Little Night, an annual event when pledges find out which older member of the sorority is their "big sister" and mentor.
She said pledges were taken to a dark basement and told they must choose between doing a line of cocaine or performing oral sex on fraternity men. Two other women present corroborated key details of Willoughby’s story. One said the sisters told the pledge class this was their punishment “for being the worst pledge class ever” before telling them it was a joke.
Two more women from different pledge classes said they had similar experiences on Kappa Kappa Gamma’s Big Little Night.
- DUBAI, United Arab Emirates -- Cafes across several Gulf Arab states started selling coffee and other cold drinks in baby bottles this month, kicking off a new trend that has elicited excitement, confusion — and backlash.
The fad began at Einstein Cafe, a slick dessert chain with branches across the region, from Dubai to Kuwait to Bahrain. Instead of ordinary paper cups, the cafe, inspired by pictures of trendy-looking bottles shared on social media, decided to serve its thick milky drinks in plastic baby bottles.
Lines clogged Einstein stores across the Gulf. People of all ages streamed onto sidewalks, waiting for their chance to suck coffee and juice from a plastic bottle. Pictures of baby bottles filled with colorful kaleidoscopes of drinks drew thousands of likes on Instagram and ricocheted across the popular social media app TikTok.
Soon, however, online haters took note — the baby bottle drinkers and providers faced a barrage of nasty comments.
Last week, the anger reached the highest levels of government. Dubai authorities cracked down. Inspection teams burst into cafes where the trend had taken off and handed out fines.
- PENSACOLA, Fla. — The Florida Department of Law Enforcement has arrested a mother and daughter accused of illegally accessing hundreds of student accounts to rig a vote and crown the teen daughter as her school's homecoming queen.
Laura Rose Carroll, 50, and her daughter, 17, are charged with offense against users of computers, computer systems, computer networks, and electronic devices; unlawful use of a two-way communication device; criminal use of personally identified information; and conspiracy to commit these offenses.
The alleged scheme took place at Tate High School in Pensacola, where Carroll’s daughter was enrolled. Carroll worked as an assistant principal at an elementary school in the same district at the time.
In October 2023, hundreds of votes for Tate High School’s Homecoming Court were tagged as fraudulent, with 117 votes originating from the same IP address linked to Carroll’s phone.
Carroll’s daughter was still crowned homecoming queen, however, video and pictures online show.
Multiple students later reported that Carroll’s daughter described using her mother’s access to Focus, the student information system, to cast votes from students’ accounts.
- A Los Angeles man is suing over 50 women for negative posts they allegedly wrote about him on social media, claiming the messages are false and defamatory.
Stewart Lucas Murrey is suing the women on a variety of charges including defamation, sex-based discrimination, intentional infliction of emotional distress, libel, invasion of privacy and more.
The lawsuit stems from posts and comments the women are accused of writing in a Facebook group called “Are We Dating The Same Guy?” The private group involves members sharing dating advice while warning others about men who are potentially harmful, dangerous or not to be trusted.
Murrey alleges the women posted a variety of false things about him including that he is suspected of murder or involved in a murder case, that he had several domestic violence charges against him, that he had tried to extort money from women he dated, that he had sexually-transmitted diseases and that he lied about being an attorney.
MONROE, Washington -- Not satisfied with the amount of money they found in a Starbucks safe, two robbers allegedly went to work filling coffee orders and pocketing the proceeds.
The pair served at least 18 unsuspecting customers over a half-hour period early Friday morning and fled with an undisclosed amount of cash, Cmdr. Rick Dunn said.
The holdup early Tuesday began before opening time, when a woman was allowed to use the shop's restroom, Dunn said. After her accomplice also entered, the two approached the manager with guns, demanded that the safe be opened and took the money.
The man then donned a Starbucks apron and he and the woman ordered an employee to assist them at the drive-up window, where they filled orders from 18 to 25 customers before fleeing. The other two employees were confined to a back room.
- OKLAHOMA CITY – Management of a south Oklahoma City mobile home park urged its residents this week to not speak out about a 13-foot-long cat-eating albino python still in the neighborhood. Residents claim that the park’s management knew about the python since January and did nothing.
“The only reason they finally did something was because a resident snapped a picture of it,” said a resident wanting to remain anonymous in fear of eviction from management. He had been living in the park for 10 years. “Them sending out a warning to us to not talk to media, it’s intimidation all the way.”
Over the last couple of months, residents say they’ve been concerned at the amount of cats missing from the neighborhood. Then a picture of the yellow albino python slithering near one of the homes gained traction online.
The snake was originally thought to be five feet long and a ball python. But when an expert was hired, he found that it was a reticulated python and was around 13 feet long eating the cats.
On to Part 2 ->