There are two schools of thought on article writing. The first school believes that content should be king and that a catchy headline is secondary to a quality article. The second school believes that the content of the article isn’t very important as long as the headline mentions something about Godzilla.
On the Internet, the first school has been abandoned for a while. I hear they are using the old building to fight raccoons. The web has made the second school more popular than ever with websites like Digg and Reddit leading the charge for less article content and more snappy headlines about aliens or celebrity “baby bump” rumors.
Speaking of the phrase “baby bump,” holy fuck. I can’t remember the last time two words made me vomit in my chest. With “baby bump” the new buzz word for pregnancy, I’m surprised women aren’t lining up at abortion clinics just to be sure.
Here are two examples of article headlines. One headline knows how to play the game, and people will at least click on it before not reading the content. The other headline won’t even get a click.
Analyst suspended over Nazi hobby
That above headline from BBC News is a perfect example of the successful headline spin. But what’s even more impressive about the headline is that it comes from an organization that has to uphold some amount of journalistic integrity. If this article was coming from some lesser website with no integrity, reliability, likability, but a lot of LICKability and comedy about advertising, the headline could have read “Analyst suspended over collection of Hitler sperm” or “Hitler’s son suspended over basement full of dog corpses”
The actual content of the “analyst suspended over Nazi hobby” article discusses how a man was suspended because he collects old war junk, some of which happens to be Nazi war junk. But BBC News knows that no one wants to read about that boring shit, so instead of “analyst suspended over rusty war medals he found on ebay” they went with the more ominous, more open for interpretation “Nazi hobby.”
“Nazi hobby” could mean anything, so the potential reader gets all kinds of ideas in her head about how this guy was suspended for stapling Hitler mustaches to babies or pushing old women into the Rhine. Ultimately, the reader finds out the truth in the first couple sentences and leaves feeling betrayed and angry, but the important thing is that first click. And angry readers are more likely to be so disenchanted that they click on a Melrose Place ad on the way out.
Johanson Announces New Line of High Power Terminations
That’s a headline for a press release from the Johanson Manufacturing Corporation — a company that must not care if anyone ever reads anything produced by its writing team. There is nothing zippy about that headline, nothing that causes wonder, nothing that brings on an inquisitive semi-erection. I predict that in the future, most drugs will be digitally smuggled through press releases like this one with terrible titles. Since no one will ever click on the press release, no one will ever get caught.
The saddest thing about this headline is that it is such an easy fix. Look at the end “new line of high power terminations.” All they had to do was change “terminations” to “terminators” and they’d be in. I could be disgustedly clicking on a Axe Body Spray ad right now.
Johanson Announces New Line of High Power Terminators. "Invest with us if you want to live," says Johanson CEO.
Conclusion
Headlines are the most important thing about an article or news story. I’m not saying you can’t write a bunch of quality paragraphs with semi-colons and everything if you want. But remember that no one is going to read far enough to be impressed by your ellipsis usage.
The BBC News story is an example of the perfect combination of a mildly disingenuous headline and sentences full of facts. But I know we’re not all as good as BBC News so feel free to create headlines like “The United States Constitution Causes Cancer” or “The Vampire Diaries Is Must See TV.”
