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This Boring Headline is Written for Google
prostoalex writes "The New York Times is running an article on how newspapers around the country find their Web sites more dependent on search engines than before. The unexpected effect? Witty double entendres, allusions and sarcastic remarks are rewritten into boring straight-to-the-point headlines that rank higher on search engines and news-specific search engines. From the article: 'About a year ago, The Sacramento Bee changed online section titles. "Real Estate" became "Homes," "Scene" turned into "Lifestyle," and dining information found in newsprint under "Taste," is online under "Taste/Food."'"
I'm boring, straight to the point, and can't be creative even if my life was on the line. Hire me!
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If a site's content is good, people come regardless.
Slashdot's popularity is an anomaly though...
Used to be to start a fire you took two sticks of about the same size and .....
then went looking for someone who actually knew how to start a fire, with two appropriately different sized sticks.
KFG
A journalist friend of a friend once made up an entire story about a library in Essex having its book budget cut just so he could use the headline (altogether now...):
BOOK LACK IN ONGAR
While a student, working on the campus newspaper, some anarchists invaded the stage at the student theatre, the Bedlam. This let me write the priceless (to my 20 yo ears) headline:
BEDLAM ANARCHY CHAOS
The only thing you can accurately describe as "Scotch" is a sticky tape made by 3M. And it's
Oh, come on. "Headless body found in topless bar" is a work of genius. "Sick Gloria in transit Monday", also.
I once worked for a Flight Simulator company, who came up with a rather innovative solution to the problem of displaying lights, especially at simulated night-time. The simulators cockpits are basically surrounded by a big curved mirror, onto which the final rasterised image is projected, to give a wraparound view. The projectors were called SPX projectors.
They found that if they just put the lights into the rasterised image that was displayed on the mirror, it looked a bit rubbish - pixelated, aliased etc. So someone came up with the idea of plotting point lights during the flyback period - they could control the beam on the way back to show up to N points of light (by flicking the beam on momentarily). I forget what N was. It looked significantly better, which is important when you're training to fly at night, as pretty much all you can see are landing lights, so you notice if it looks bad.
Anyway, they came up with the term 'calligraphic' to describe this technique - something to with it the beam being used in a more analogue, continuous way, I guess.
The real reason was, of course, so they could give the product this name:
I apologise on their behalf.
First off, someone is confusing "section headings" and "headlines". Second you are conflating misleading, confusing headlines with ones that use language imaginatively.
I've written some headlines in my time; getting something to fit to the page, convey the meaning and (hopefully) be elegant is an art. The occasional pun is no bad thing.
I remember the story of a UK national newspaper sub-seditor who had a headline all made up in hot metal which sat above his head for on a wall for years on the off-chance that the suitable event occurred. It never did.
The event? He wanted Michael Foot (labour party leader) to be put in charge of the organisation monitoring IRA decommissioning.
The headline?
Foot Heads Arms Body.
Ah well.