To put in further bas relief how good the “reign of terrier” headline is, here’s a headline from today’s — you saw it coming — Press of Atlantic City:

“Computer techs on the clock to prevent glitches from early daylight-saving shift”

Why is this not a good headline? First of all it takes no fewer than four lines on the Press home page. That’s a lot. Secondly, it tells you precisely what the story is about in an unclever way.

Here’s the lede and first few grafs of the story by Tom Barlas (who was there when I was there!):

It’s easy to set the time on the bedroom alarm clock. Just push a few buttons.

But for the past several weeks, businesses and organizations have been tinkering with their computer systems to make more major adjustments linked to an earlier-than-usual start of daylight-saving time.

With the federal Energy Policy Act of 2005 setting daylight-saving time to begin March 11, technicians are installing new programs and computer patches so the switchover won’t create problems with electronically monitored things such as rail schedules, bank transactions and automatic stock trades.

Even something as simple as computer-logged appointments must be checked.

That’s good writing. It merits a better headline. How about:

“Shift in time takes sine.”

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