MEDIA: Same Story, Different Headline

A couple of weeks ago, Andy Rotherham and Richard Whitmire (the new Tom Toch?) co-wrote a piece in The New Republic about Randi Weingarten. The headline of the story read Making the Grade: Can AFT president Randi Weingarten satisfy teachers and reformers at the same time?.

But when I came across the story on Bloglines, there was an interesting (and much more pointed) headline there: Is Union Leader Randi Weingarten A True Educational Reformer Or Just A Shill For Obstructionist Teachers?

Which version came first? I have no idea. Who determined that the original headline was too harsh? Again, no idea.

The Bloglines version is much spicier, and the conspiracy theorist who lives inside me imagines that it was something dreamed up by a sleep-drived editor and then deemed too hot by Whitmire and Rotherham.  But the official headline is in fact more fitting to the piece itself, which raises the possibility of Weingarten's duplicitousness but then moves on to other, gentler and more constructive possibilities and observations. Weingarten's not playing us, we're told; she's just not seeing all the opportunities.