i newspaper, July 10, 2017
I’m pretty sure I have never seen Bolton in a national newspaper heading before. There is a good reason why seasoned subs would almost never put a place name (except possibly London) in a headline: you are telling the 99.99 per cent of your readers who have no connection with the place that the story is probably not of much interest to them. Very occasionally it would work, for example if the place name is perceived as amusing or if there is a striking contrast between the image of the place and the event, for example ‘The tramp from Tunbridge Wells’ or ‘The princess who worked in Bethnal Green market’. Bolton, however, is really not a name to conjure with.
Incidentally, why single out the five-year-old girl in the intro? And if you are going to do that, why use the awkward word ‘siblings’ instead of ‘brothers’? You do not need to repeat the girl’s age or the fact that there were two boys in the second par. The father’s efforts should come higher. I would say:
Three children and their mother died when fire swept through a terrace house. Their father is in hospital after trying to save them.
Incidentally, contrary to some authorities, I think it should be ‘terrace house’, not ‘terraced house’. The adjective ‘terraced’ refers to hillside land carved into steps for cultivation.