The subeditor’s craft is a tricky one. Original headlines are hard to come by. Some are so obvious and clichéd that they are banned in style guides – at my old employer Euromoney, using the phrase “banking on success” was almost a sackable offence.
And yet there is something of a lack of imagination doing the rounds regarding North Korea. Let’s see”
a) the country is a problem – rockets, nuclear worries, terrible regime etc
b) it rhymes with “Maria”
c) everyone remembers the Sound of Music
Result?
“How do you solve a problem like Korea”
Used by?
- The Sun
- The Guardian
- The Independent
- The Economist
- Euromoney (no bias here)
- and most recently, The Telegraph.
It’s not UK-only either. See Time, and Global Post. And that’s just from a few quick Google searches. There will be countless others (41,600 results as of today).
It’s not every headline that is shared by the Sun and the Economist, but this one is such a classic, it spans every type of publication. I bet we haven’t seen the last of it.
