With all the attention paid to homeless people, Occupy Vancouver protesters and cyclists during the civic election campaign, one group was completely overlooked:

The headline writers.

Those literate souls who toil in obscurity on news desks across the city, trying to make news out of snooze. And today, they’re in tough. They don’t have much to work with in the wake of Saturday’s
somnambulant civic snore-off.

“Mildly progressive mayor re-elected by a tiny minority” is not much of a headline. Nowhere near as newsworthy as “Right-wing forces beat back socialist horde! Common sense restored!”

When you’re on a deadline, you don’t have time to pine for what could have been. You’ve got a lemon, so you make lemonade. How about “Hundreds of thousands protest civic election by refusing to vote! Vast Majority stays home!”? Not bad, but the same thing happens every time. Nothing new there.

Sometimes you can make news out of dirt by picking an angle that everyone else has overlooked, such as “After umpteen tries, Green party’s Adriane Carr finally gets elected” or “Second generation of Genovas wins park board seat,” but those really are sidebars.

Maybe the direct approach will work: “Business as usual” or the slightly more provocative “Nothing happened.” If you make them big enough, so they cover the whole page, maybe someone will pick one up off the newsstand.

Not convinced? OK, let’s try the celebrity angle: “Kim Kardashian not eligible to vote in Vancouver election.” Got your attention, didn’t it? And it’s accurate!

It’s hard enough being in the media these days, with everybody else horning in with their tweets and camera phones. Headline writers were hoping to catch a break. If Suzanne Anton had defeated Gregor Robertson, and then actually went through with her threat to forcibly evict the Occupy Vancouver protesters from the front lawn of the art gallery, they would have had days, maybe weeks, of sensational headlines. As it is, keyboards will be flung across newsrooms in frustration as Robertson returns to office:

“City hall continues to hint that Occupy Vancouver violates city ordinances. Tent City could be gone by 2014. Police poised to do nothing.”

The drought will spread across every newsroom. Mike McCardell could be the only guy covering city hall: Chris Gailus: “Remember the good old days when city hall was a sure-fire source of news? Me neither. But here’s a colourful old guy who does. We’ll get to him after sports, weather, the markets and news about Uzbekistan.”

Don’t touch that dial.