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.
Made you look!
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.
... 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.
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.
My favorite of all time is from an article about a program for creating random (but plausible) headlines, based on permutations of real headlines. I think it was in BYTE.
Tornado kills five, self
No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism. - Winston Churchill
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).
Confidant. Easily mis-heard. Excuse me while I kiss the sky.
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.
Correct.
People used to react to headlines in making a decision to purchase a newspaper. Now they search for topics of interest in making a decision to click through to whomever has the info they wanted before they went looking for news.
Once they had the newspaper in their hands, they unfolded it to discover that the only interesting headline was above the fold on the front page, and the rest was crap written by communications majors.
Now they read the article, then go back to the search engine to find other things they want to know, often on exactly the same topic.
I.e., newspapers are no longer 80 pages long, 300 on Sunday. They're 1 story deep, 24/7/365 (but really 9-5 on weekdays because even on the internet you can't get people to work any time other than the space between breakfast and dinner).
The salacious nature of headlines has actually been reduced. "If it bleeds it leads" is no longer the most profitable strategy. Breadth of topics and close tracking of current topicality are more valuable, and more likely to get people to pluck the leaves from your tree (and with them the parasitic corporate eggs ads that are glued to their undersides).