Slashdot Mirror
Taylor Momsen Did Not Write This Slashdot Headline
Hugh Pickens writes "David Carr writes that headlines in newspapers and magazines were once written with readers in mind, to be clever or catchy or evocative, but now headlines are just there to get the search engines to notice. Hence the headline for this story that includes a prized key word for one of the 'Gossip Girls' — just the thing to push this Slashdot summary to the top of Google rankings. 'All of the things that make headlines meaningful in print — photographs, placement, and context — are nowhere in sight on the Web,' writes Carr. Headlines have become, as Gabriel Snyder, the recently appointed executive editor of Newsweek.com, says, 'naked little creatures that have to go out into the world to stand and fight on their own.' In this context, 'Jon Stewart Slams Glenn Beck' is the ideal headline, guaranteed to pull in thousands of pageviews. And while nobody is suggesting that the Web should somehow accommodate the glories of The New York Post's headlines in that paper's prime, some of its classics would still work. 'Remember "Headless Body in Topless Bar," perhaps the most memorable New York Post headline ever? It's direct, it's descriptive, and it's oh-so-search-engine-friendly. And not a Taylor Momsen in sight.'"
I'm a technology journalist now working for a web-exclusive publication after years of working in print. And headlines have gone from being one of the most fun parts of the job to one of the worst. I've had endless arguments with editors who will freak out if there's anything even the slightest bit clever or sly about a headline--if it's not packed with keywords, all properly researched via Google Trends and Omniture and God knows how many other vetting systems, it's just not wanted at all. It's horrific, and does the readers a tremendous disservice.
The bigger problem is that the problem isn't limited to just headlines. Stories have to be constructed the same way, with this many mentions of the lead product or whatever in the deck and the first and last paragraphs, with the full product name used this many times, with this many links out to this many other sites... Journalism, at least the form of it I'm involved in, is no longer about informing people or telling stories, it's all about getting picked up by Google. The training I had never dared call that journalism. Once upon a time, it was known as advertising.
Or just ignore them and actually rank by the content!!! line they're supposed to do?
I have no idea who Taylor Momsen is and I never heard of that headline but the Headline was clever.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
This explains why every few minutes, stock ticker sites like Yahoo Finance are producing new riveting headlines that leave the impression that the cause of every move in the stock market is fully understood.
Thank you for being a friend
Traveled down the road and back again
Your heart is true, your a pal and a cosmonaut.
And if you through a party
Invited everyone you ever knew
You would see the biggest gift would be from me
And the card attached would say thank you for being a friend.
Made you look!
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
I thought that it was being pushed for people to be able to include metadata and keywords and tags via hidden HTML attached to their articles to give a tip to search engines. Whatever happened to that part of moving forward on the web? Did it turn out that it was too easy to game search engines with spam if you could constantly update what your spam site's metadata was indexed as?
Hypothetically this would allow you to put something very clever and catchy as a headline and then insert the obvious keywords into a meta tag to help out search engines. You could even avoid all the keywords.
Also, engines like Google were designed for you to be agnostic as to what each engine was doing. Tailoring yourself to one search engine doesn't only ruin what they're trying to accomplish but also what you're trying to accomplish which is being informative to readers, not the search engine. Know, respect and cater to your audience and they will stay with you through the hard times.
My work here is dung.
When you write/link to about nerdy things, the topics are their own keywords. SEO requires nearly zero effort on my part due to the subject matter. w00t!
Fun little tidbit about some stats from my site: of the last 500 visitors who found it by using a search engine, 481 were from Google!
Living With a Nerd
I don't read articles anymore. I just read descriptive URLs. http://example.com/5541957/display-myths-shattered-how-monitor-companies-cook-their-specs
I think the headline on that article was about American Idol, but I'm not sure, as I didn't read the article.
Their they're doing there hair.
Is it just me, or does the usual replacement of "and" in headlines with a comma get really boring? I seem to see it only on en-US language sites and have stopped reading more than one because it was really wrong, stupid.
... who Taylor Momsen is. And even better, I lack any desire to find out.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
But a quick GIS revealed she's fucking hot. That's all you need to know.
WTF am I doing replying to an AC at 5 A.M on a Friday night?
Those same search engine grabbing headlines are used for the news crawl along the bottom of every newscast.
Weird little sentences that don't make any sense, scrolling along the screen during what is in theory a show supposedly there to educate us on issues is just sad.
The internet is turning out to be one big powerpoint presentation. http://slashdot.org/hardware/03/12/14/0422201.shtml
No Slashdot in the first 20 or so returns. After which I got really bored and went back to work.
Best Slashdot Co
Slightly off-topic, but the Post headline that has lodged itself firmly in my brain is the one that was attached to Ike Turner's obituary: "Ike "Beats" Tina to Death".
Frankly, I hate 'clever' headlines which manage to work in some rather stupid pun while declining to actually say what the freaking article is about. It may make headline writing 'fun' for writers, but it just annoys everyone else. *You* want to be clever - *I* just want to decide whether the article is actually about something I'm interested in.
Just wait two years and you might be interested to find out...
Who or what is a Taylor Momsen?
Also: News flash, people try to use misleading titles to get people to their ads.
My first reaction was that it was some techie who's a grandchild of "Swede" Momsen, the inventer of a breathing device for crew members to use to escape sunken submarines.
"Taylor Momsen Did Not Write This Slashdot Headline." ... ..... /Head explodes
"Hugh Pickens writes..."
"David Carr writes that..."
The greatest revenge in life is massive success.
Ass slash pot poster, wee wood nut dew anything two increase our size or girth in any google search. We wouldnt load our postings with terms to entice sexual addicts like "hot gay porn sex explicit nudity", or grabbing words out of current headlines like "tiger woods oily democrat sex video", or words from past headlines like "tiger woods is sexy michael jacksons intern".
Who would win this election: Andrew Weiner vs Andrew Weiner's weiner.
I had no idea either, but she's attractive enough to have made a google image search a good idea.
However, the search resulted in one of those uncomfortable moments. I'm thinking she's a pretty woman. Blonde, sexy... and then notice that in the results there's a picture of her at age eight. Kind of a buzz-kill.
And get a record comment count. What else might possibly get more comments than the political threads? Taylor Momson, that's what.
I remember the days when SEO didn't work very well with Google.
I'd think most search engines would automatically trash a headline with "Slashdot" and "well-researched" that close to each other.
I'm sure "SlashdotMedia" will improve on all the wonders that Dice Holdings blessed us all with
I remember (well, I remember seeing pictures) those old newspaper headlines that freakin' paragraphs of text. Seriously, like multiple sentences (or at least should have been multiple sentences). Example: http://img219.imageshack.us/i/titanicnytkp7.jpg/
I judt got a nre Kinesis keybiartf so please excusr ant egregiou typos.
I believe he's the bass player for Nickleback
Frankly I don't buy the "glory days of newspaper" nostalgia argument. The idea that headlines were once crafted to be deeply insightful, and informative doesn't mesh with my own recollections. I've always found headlines to be frustratingly vague. Headline writers seem obsessed with injecting puns, usually at the expense of clarity. The whole concept of a headline in print, being limited by font size and page size, means that the content is strangely constrained and thus non-optimal sentence fragments end up being used. And, finally, I think newspapers have been optimizing their headlines to be attention-grabbing (rather than strictly informative/useful) for a long time now.
In other words, the notion of a headline crafted for a non-journalistic purpose has been around for a long time. In the print era, it was optimized for what was most likely to catch/attract a reader who is walking by a newsstand. (There is a reason the headlines on print newspapers are so gigantic.) Nowadays the headlines are being optimized for what an online reader is most likely to stumble across or search for. In both cases, the headline is an advertisement for the article. It is meant to induce you to go check out the product.
As long as there is a profit motive behind journalism/news, there will be a conflict between what the distributor wants (to make money) and what the consumer wants (to be informed). That's more or less fine, since we've achieved a decent balance. But that does mean there are some inefficiencies (like infuriatingly misleading headlines).
Lately I've been noticing that I get a lot more google matches that are utterly irrelevant to what I was looking for, and on examination, they usually don't even contain any of the keywords that I typed. This is presumably part of the same problem, due to the growing success of marketers in "attracting eyes" by tricking the search sites into sending people to the marketers' sites.
Perhaps a useful approach would be for the search sites to allow us to "ban" a site, similarly to what a lot of email and news readers have done for years. This could be done in a browser, of course, but it should work even better if the search site got the information. They could then use readers' banning as part of the ranking, because they'd know that a site is not a good match for someone looking for keywords X, Y and Z, despite what it may look like to the search bot.
Another approach might be to see if the courts would go along with applying "truth in advertising" laws to stuff online. You'd think this would be obvious, but we're still in the stage at which the inclusion of words like "computer" or "online" immediately cancels all precedent, and centuries of lessons must be relearned for the new computer/network environment. It's probably still some years before false advertising online can be challenged and prosecuted as easily as with false and misleading print or broadcast ads.
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
I... I am in shock right now, truly disturbed... I have debated whether to even post this horrific discovery.. but I just found out, just now, that out of all of the world's sexy people, every single one of them was at one point a disgusting, unsexy child. I know, it's true! My buzz, it has been murdered.
slashdot: where everyone yells sarcastic metaphors to themselves to understand the issue
Which you easily managed to do by not reading the summary.
She's 16. I think that might be important, too.
!#@%*)anks for hanging up the phone, dear.
Recent example:
Microsoft Mice Made in Chinese Youth Sweatshops?
makes for more views than
Several Technology Companies Reported to Use Child Labor at Chinese Youth Sweatshop
even though it's as true. (To be fair, all other media outlets did the same thing, ignoring companies like Apple and Best Buy who used the same factory.)
This is pretty typical - every day I see at least one article where the headline misrepresents or outright contradicts the actual article. Pretty much everyone, in the interests of page views and advertising revenue, will sacrifice journalistic integrity and truth.
The best thing about a boolean is even if you are wrong, you are only off by a bit.
Here you go: http://www.moejackson.com/2009-how-much-did-taylor-momsens-parents-sell-their-daughter-for-1023
"There is no such thing, at this date of the world's history, in America, as an independent press. You know it and I know it.
There is not one of you who dares to write your honest opinions, and if you did, you know beforehand that it would never appear in print. I am paid weekly for keeping my honest opinion out of the paper I am connected with. Others of you are paid similar salaries for similar things, and any of you who would be so foolish as to write honest opinions would be out on the streets looking for another job. If I allowed my honest opinions to appear in one issue of my paper, before twenty-four hours my occupation would be gone.
The business of the journalists is to destroy the truth, to lie outright, to pervert, to vilify, to fawn at the feet of mammon, and to sell his country and his race for his daily bread. You know it and I know it, and what folly is this toasting an independent press?
We are the tools and vassals of rich men behind the scenes. We are the jumping jacks, they pull the strings and we dance. Our talents, our possibilities and our lives are all the property of other men. We are intellectual prostitutes."
John Swinton, who edited the New York Times during the Civil War
---
"This is a man that blames the United States and their policies for the attack that took place on September 11th. That is such an egregious, outrageous, unfair offense that I would have nothing to do with his money either, and I applaud what Mayor Giuliani did. It showed a lot of guts and character."
Sean Hannity, 2001, in reference to Alwaleed bin Talal trying to donate $10m after 9/11
---
"And if you are this prince, think about investing more in those banks again. Particularly one bank, a big bank, Citigroup, because for this Saudi Arabian prince it about the long-term deal. And Prince Alwaleed bin Talal has not become the richest man in the Middle East or one of the richest men in the world minding conventional wisdom. Once more, his Kingdom Holding Company continues to be among the world’s most successful and admired often by defying popular fads.
For example, Prince Alwaleed has been a big buyer of media stocks, especially News Corp, I must disclose, the parent of this fine channel because he’s convinced that my show will lead to an economic boom.
(LAUGHTER)
I just made that up, I wanted to see if you were paying attention. Anyways, he’s very big on a global recovery, that it will take hold and media will be reflecting that. Joining me now for this very, very rare sit down, the man who grants so few of them, I’m very honored as my special guest tonight and for this evening, my only remaining guest tonight, Prince Alwaleed bin Talal."
Neil Cavuto interviews Alwaleed bin Talal on 01/15/2010
---
"I really consider my investment with Mr. Rupert Murdoch, with James Murdoch, not as an investment, but as an alliance. That’s a core investment that will never be sold... This is an empire that is run and managed very well by Mr. Murdoch, and James... When I say a strategic investment goes forever, I think Rupert is there to stay a long time."
Alwaleed bin Talal in the same interview
. . . with their respective spouses so that my Slashdot post may be more easily found by Bing! The Internet has no morals, just better algorithms.
...was the best headline ever; when Jerry Garcia died (may that puff of smoke in the heavens be him). The writer of that headline admitted that he'd been waiting most of his journalistic life to apply it. Surely a one-line ruby script can be concocted to extract from http://news.google.com/ the highest scoring headline words?
Seems like most of the web pages now are written to snare search engines more that to attract readers. For a good example, check out this SEO patheticized home page www.spawb.com, first with flash turned on, then with flash turned off.
So that's where he ended up after that Texans QB gig didn't work out.... I guess going to the niners would have immersed him in tech culture...
"Waste not one watt!" - CZ
That honor, in my humble opinion would be the Post's December 13, 2007 headline:
IKE 'BEATS' TINA TO DEATH
Reporting the death of Ike Turner of a cocaine overdose.
That one made me actually laugh out loud.
Is it because Tyler Momsen is naked and petrified?
Imagine if the newspapers gave up on mind-bending overly-clever space-saving headlines and just went with descriptive titles. It would make sense to me that this is a good strategy in the modern era. There are no space restrictions really on the web, or not as much as in print. Perhaps Google could somehow try to reward accuracy in headlines in their algorithms. Did I just say "Al Gore rhythms?"
Currently hooked on AMP
I find it difficult to shop for things online. Every retailer now seems to show up in Google search hits, whether or not they even sell the item. There's nothing quite so infuriating as following a link you think will get you to a fair deal on the item you're looking to buy, only to discover they don't even carry the damn thing!
The idea is the same: get the eyeballs watching and pick their pockets while they're distracted.
Yes back in the day.. pre-internet.. I read on the UK's The Sun the title
NUT STAB HELL BLAME
oh so evocative and poetic!
Haha! Fooled you back! I looked in the Firehose and saw all the well-researched actual tech articles.
Hot grits. Hot Grits? HOT GRITS!
Services, news services included, stink because the customer is NOT the individual consumer but another corporation. Corporations are not human, they have no intelligence, they aren't even alive in any meaningful sense. If companies could ditch the actual end consumer entirely, they would. End consumers want something - however minimal, drab or insignificant - they can point to. Corporations can't point and (without intelligence) wouldn't know what to point to if they could. It follows that end users are much more expensive to support than corporations. In a market economy, why support the least-profitable sector (which they really don't, as anyone who has tried talking to customer service would know) or even sell to them?
In fact, the Dot Com era was an early attempt to eliminate the need to even have a product -to- sell to end consumers. This is a natural state for this kind of system to drift to. End consumers are always going to be more expensive more expensive than intermediate users.
I don't know if there even IS a solution to this problem, short of an imposed minimal quality of service (which is then guaranteed to be the ONLY quality of service you will ever see) or providing QoS-driven incentives (which will mean we won't have a market economy).
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
I... I am in shock right now, truly disturbed... I have debated whether to even post this horrific discovery.. but I just found out, just now, that out of all of the world's sexy people, every single one of them was at one point a disgusting, unsexy child. I know, it's true! My buzz, it has been murdered.
You could solve this problem by becoming a pedophile, but that might cause yet more problems. Probably best to just pretend that people spring fully formed out of high school graduation ceremonies.
Nostalgia's not what it used to be.
A story which doesn't inform people doesn't work well even if it's well placed. Sure, if I'm looking for a particular piece of news I might hit the best placed news item first, but normally I read sites that have good news, and only rarely supplement it with a search. I do this when the news item doesn't have enough information. So the thing is, if you have a very informative news site, I will follow it. If you have a news site that's not very informative I might still get to it through google, but will dismiss it.
It's a good question whether it's more beneficial to have tons of occasional hits rather than a good following.
A mention of this story is now 14th on the first Google page, Wednesday, May 19, 2010, 1:10 PM PST.
There, fixed the subject for you.
"That, too, is sexual." -Glen Quagmire
This slashdot article is infact a masterful troll from CmdrTaco. Not only is that headline a working example, but any name dropping in the comments will add to the effect in google ranking also. I therefore humbly submit this comment (See subject).
After logging in slashdot still does not take you back to the page you were on. It's been that way for 20 years.
I'm too lazy to search for links but I'm pretty sure I've already seen this reported on slashdot twice in the past years.
...was the headline I suggested after attending a particular baseball game between the Yankees and the Brewers at Yankee Stadium. Curiously, the Post didn't use it.
That I heard about was in a British newspaper.
The story was about a lunatic who escaped from an asylum after raping some of the women in the laundry.
The headline?
Nut Screws Washers and Bolts.
-- Braden's law of data: All data spends some of its lifetime in an excel spreadsheet.