BROOKE GLADSTONE: Remember the classic New York Daily News headline back in the '70s: "Ford to City: Drop Dead." It had a potent political impact, and who can forget the legendary "Headless Body in Topless Bar" that graced the New York Post one day back in 1983? Tabloid papers like the Post and the News depend on big, splashy headlines to push newsstand sales, and there's a science to crafting them. Michael Shain and Mike Pearl, both veteran tabloid journalists, have created a card game called Man Bites Dog which will bring the lurid world of sensational journalism to living rooms all over the country this Christmas. Back before Garfield lost his voice in a tragic holiday party accident, he managed this interview with Michael Shain.

BOB GARFIELD: Michael Shain joins me in the studio. Mike, welcome to the show!

MICHAEL SHAIN: Thank you! It's a pleasure to be here.

BOB GARFIELD: All right let's give listeners a quick example of how this game is played. I'm going to deal myself 5 cards--

MICHAEL SHAIN: I'll take 5 here too.

BOB GARFIELD: -- now you can exchange up to 3 cards if you don't like what you've dealt.

MICHAEL SHAIN: That's correct.

BOB GARFIELD: Like-- like poker, right?

MICHAEL SHAIN: Just like -- exactly - it's just like 5 card poker or 7 card stud - you can do it either way.

BOB GARFIELD: All right so what do you have so far?

MICHAEL SHAIN: I have - I'm gonna - here - I have-- First Lady Falls for Blind Girl! Not bad.

BOB GARFIELD: What?

MICHAEL SHAIN:I, I had to throw away one. [LAUGHTER] I had to throw away "Suspect." I could do--actually it was not so bad! -- Suspect Blind Girl is sort of fun, isn't it? First Lady falls for Suspect Blind Girl?

BOB GARFIELD:No, this is something like poker but also something like scrabble because different words have different point values assigned to them.

MICHAEL SHAIN: Precisely.

BOB GARFIELD: For example, Blonde is 25 points but Lady is only 5 - why is that?

MICHAEL SHAIN: In the newspaper business, especially the tabloid business, certain concepts have more reach - more power than others - and "blonde" is a-- a story about a blonde is going to be far more interesting any day than a story about a cleaning lady.

BOB GARFIELD: Okay, now there are some 50-point cards--

MICHAEL SHAIN: There's some heavy words in those. "Nun" is a 50-point word-- [BOTH SPEAK AT ONCE]

BOB GARFIELD: "Nun" - and "Bizarre" is another one -"Naked"--

MICHAEL SHAIN: "Naked," always--

BOB GARFIELD: "Missing"--

MICHAEL SHAIN: "Missing"--

BOB GARFIELD: -- is worth 50. Now here's one I'm, I'm, I'm a little surprised at -- 50 points --"Urologist."

MICHAEL SHAIN: Oh, please, are you kidding me?! The word "Urologist" in a headline is going to make you stop and read that story! [LAUGHTER] Guaranteed.

BOB GARFIELD:Okay "Falls for" is worth 25; "Runs Off with" is worth 50. The lowest scoring cards are --among them are -- "Feds," "Czar," "Tourist" and "Wall Street." Now why don't they have--the oomph that "Urologist" has?

MICHAEL SHAIN: "Tourist." I think that's probably a reflection of our New York bias, because once again - something happens to a tourist - who cares? Skip right over that story.

BOB GARFIELD:Forgive me -- I don't want to put words in your mouth -- or in your hand-- but I, I--what I'm beginning to understand is that the actual fundamental news value of the story is not what matters, but rather the drama with which the story can be headlined in. Am I jumping to conclusions here?

MICHAEL SHAIN: I think that would be fair. How you project a story, especially in a tabloid newspaper with limited space, is really, really important. You're a newsstand-sale paper. Papers like the Post and the Daily News don't have a lot of home delivery. You've got to sell papers to people on their way to work; you have to sell them on the-- when they're out at lunch, and in a sense what really matters is the way a story is projected and not so much what goes on underneath the headline.

BOB GARFIELD: Is there something about journalism that we learn by playing Man Bites Dog?

MICHAEL SHAIN:I think so. That was really one of the reasons we did it, too. It's to show that there's myths to all these newspapers and all these newspaper stories, and it's true for all newspapers, but the New York Post our myths are, are pretty easy -- the little guy can be a hero - the rich are unhappy - miracles do happen. At the New York Times they too have their own myths -- they have myths like -- everybody means well. That's why they call everybody "Mr." by the way. There's got to be two or three sides to every story. There - so that's - you don't get that same kind of good guy/bad guy interplay that you get with the popular press. And this is meant to show you that the popular press traffics not in politics but in ideas and the ideas are the things that make people common among themselves -- it has to do with sex and with death!

BOB GARFIELD: All right, well Michael-- Media Host Thanks Guest!

MICHAEL SHAIN: Thank you very much.

BOB GARFIELD: Michael Shain is the co-creator of Man Bites Dog -- a family game in which you can write your own tabloid headlines. [MUSIC]

BROOKE GLADSTONE:That's it for this week's show. On the Media was produced by Janeen Price and Katya Rogers with Megan Ryan and Emily ford; engineered by Rob Christiansen and Dylan Keefe, and edited by me. We had help from Sharon Ball and Natasha Korgaonkar. Our webmaster is Amy Pearl. Arun Rath is our senior producer and Dean Capello our executive producer. Bassist/composer Ben Allison wrote our theme. This is On the Media from NPR. I'm Brooke Gladstone.

BOB GARFIELD: [IN VERY RASPY VOICE] And I'm Bob Garfield.