I collect headlines and I am upset by headlines that begin with I

Allow me a pedantic grumble. I collect headlines and publish the ones I find admirable, intriguing or spectacularly awful every year in Daily Maverick. 2025’s collection can be found here.

Headlines matter. Without them, written media content would be an unnavigable mess of potage. We would have no clear way of deciphering what to choose to read. They are like menus in restaurants or book covers. They tempt or repel or bore, and, done well, they guide us through the media maze and make decisions for us.

Sadly, the wisdom and skill of the great headline is a dying art. The keepers of the flame were crusty subeditors with a gift for brevity and an eye for wordplay. They have been culled in cost-cutting to the point of extinction, and, in their place, time-short, multipurpose media staff deliver functional afterthoughts or ask the writer to provide the headline.

And I can live with that as long as certain obvious fundamental rules are still applied. One of which is cast in stone and inked in blood: Never begin a headline (or a column for that matter) with the word “I”. That would be evidence of something “outright barbarous”, to quote my writing hero George Orwell in his brilliantly succinct Six Rules for Writing.

Sadly, this sacred script banning the I word has been trashed and the Me Generation, the I Specialists and the Lived Experience Battalion all have got hold of headlines to a laughable and astoundingly dull degree. Especially in the UK where, in the past week, I counted six examples from a single home page of The Times of London, 12 from one of the Daily Mail’s and six on The Daily Telegraph. The Guardian, lamentably, has also fallen into this disrepair and wins gold and silver in the coveted “First Person Headline Boredom Cup” with:

• I’ve spent decades collecting postboxes; and
• I was a professional fairy.

Bronze goes to the Daily Mail with:

• I lived off cheese and toast and custard creams for breakfast.

Some of the other very recent “read-me” riveters which also competed for the podium:

• I visited the Masters shop (The Times);
• I’ve spent 35 years heading footballs (The Times);
• I’ve been drinking in Edinburgh’s pubs for decades (The Times);
• I visit Naples and eat pizza every month (The Times);
• I once stood behind Anna Wintour waiting for the bathroom and yes, she is frosty (Sydney Morning Herald);
• I don’t care about Artemis II (Daily Telegraph);
• I’m 33 and happily married (Daily Telegraph);
• I’m training for my fifth marathon (Daily Telegraph);
• I married my personal trainer (Daily Telegraph); and
• I’m a French pharmacist (Daily Mail).

Sadly, this appalling practice has slid across the Atlantic and has even infested that bastion of best journalistic behaviour, The New York Times, where, last week, they headlined an excellent piece from the peerless Supreme Court observer Linda Greenhouse with:

• I Almost Never Predict Supreme Court Outcomes.

To date, decent South African media commendably have resisted this atrocious trend where all the major outlets only use “I” as the first word in a headline if it is a newsworthy quote from someone being interviewed, which, even in the halcyon headlines era, was acceptable practice. At least, that was the healthy local habit until I came along and, with the headline on this piece, created a new world record.

A few elite publications have tried the Double I headline:

• I don’t care if Gen Z hate me. I’m mortgage-free, equity-tastic (The Times);
• I got off at Sydney’s spookiest train station and this is what I found (Sydney Morning Herald).

But so far I have only spotted one example of the next-level horror of the Triple Subjective Headline (Two Is and a Me):

• I’m playing Alec Guinness – this is how I did it and what his son told me (The Times).

But with “I collect headlines and I am upset by headlines that begin with I” I have landed the world’s first Triple I Headline and, for the bonus point, created a sentence with unheard-of back-to-back Is.

Now that, Mr Orwell, is truly outright barbarism. DM

Mike Wills is a Cape Town-based writer and radio talk show host.