Ricochet is the best place on the internet to discuss the issues of the day, either through commenting on posts or writing your own for our active and dynamic community in a fully moderated environment. In addition, the Ricochet Audio Network offers over 50 original podcasts with new episodes released every day.
Topless Woman Found in Headline Post
An anonymous tipster sent me an excellent suggestion. He thought the “How to Write a Great Post” list needed one more tip. Looking at the examples he sent, I had to agree.
Hence: Rule #12: Create a clear, self-explanatory headline. Too many headlines are enigmas that require further investigation. Don’t make readers scan further to see if they are interested.
Entirely correct. But of course, that’s not all there is to the art of writing headlines–as anyone who spent years dreaming them up on newspaper desks will tell you. (And yes, I remember the days when “newspaper desks” existed.) So let me give you a few more tips. Of course, it’s as much art as science. The main thing, as our tipster notes, is that the headline must tell you what the post is about. That’s the the minimum, and it is also quite satisfactory. But if you feel inspired, try this: Tell them exactly enough to say what it’s about. But no more. Leave them just a bit unsure where you’re going with this, and highly motivated to read to very the end. Drop a subtle hint that the rest of the post might even be quite compelling. Clear and self-explanatory is great. But if readers don’t feel they’ve just got to know more, it’s either a bit too clear, or the post itself might not be that great.
For example: Oxford Graduates Rely on Old Boys’ Network Overseas
Sure passes the “clear and self-explanatory” test. You probably have a sense of what that story’s about.
But which of these do you really want to read: Three Englishmen Saved From Boiling Pot by Cannibal Chief, Who was a Friend at Oxford
Bet you even clicked on that one.
Or this: Foton-M4 satellite returns to Earth Following Satellite Heating Malfunction
Nothing wrong with that. Tells you what it’s about. Gets the job done.
But then again, so would this: Sex Geckos die in Orbit on Russian Space Project
A slight change of emphasis. Still accurate. But that one made you want all the story, didn’t it.
Or you could write a headline like this: French officials: Commercial Drones Pose no Threat
Perfectly accurate, I must say. I just don’t don’t feel threatened, so I can hardly complain that this is not accurate. But if I wanted to get my own attention, no less the wold’s, I figure this is the way to go:
UFO Buzzed French Nuclear Power Plant See what I mean?
And now, gentlemen of Ricochet, confess. Why did you even read this far? I’ll bet I know:
You surely didn’t really think that would happen on Ricochet, dd you. So use your best judgment. I figure you’ll decide that with rare exceptions, clear and explanatory is more than good enough. But true enough: Sometimes a bit of inspiration can’t hurt.
Published in General
The Variety headline that set the standard was “Sticks nix hick pix” in 1935. The story was about Iowa exhibitors who had no use for movies about farmers because real farmers weren’t interested in them.
The last great practitioners of the headline work for the New York Post.
I’m sorry to burst your bubble, Claire, but The Golden Age never existed. Remember the Maine? Remember “Yellow Journalism?” There was a time in the mid-Twentieth Century when journalists said that they were upholding the highest standards. They claimed it because of the yellow journalism of earlier decades. It was a time when they did not report on things like FDR’s inability to walk without aid or Jack Kennedy’s voracious appetite for women. The claims to those high standards were like the Republicans claims to family values. Some follow the standard, but many only pay lip service. It is certainly better to have a standard, to have that shining goal up on the hill. And in the case of Republicans and family values, most do take them seriously. But most news hacks, uh, I mean “journalists,” never wanted to climb that hill. They were small people who were more than happy to inject their opinion in where they could.
I much prefer the era of the early Nineteenth Century in journalism. There would be a paper for every opinion, and they were honest about their views, and about hating the other guy. It was so much better than the “we present our opinions as facts” ruse.
Some ledes should be buried…
Even on Ricochet?
Thanks for that–& yes, the Post still gets something good now & then. Who’d’ye read?
Not that good, not that old, but I agree there was something, a kind of daring that’s not legal now. Or so I like to think–when I was a kid, I thought a journalist was devil-like, Cary Grant in His girl Friday. Thanks for the stories, they’re gorgeous-
Claire you are too funny.
Opinions, fine. Humans have them. It’s the “facts” part that freaks me out.
I have no experience working in broadcast journalism and no idea about the details of the culture of it. I couldn’t say what it was like before or now. Now, thing about print journalism is, around the world, including in the US, first question to ask about what’s in the news is not, “What do the newspapers say,” it’s “what’s on broadcast news.” Varies a lot by country, class, region, etc., but the huge revolution in media consumption was TV.
And it is amazing, just amazing, how so-called “educated” people do not seem to be “educated” to the point of asking the first thing anyone “smart” would ask: “So, how do people who are not “educated” get their news? Might we wish to ask this of ourselves?”
I’m telling you, if you look at these long, complex studied of “the media” in country X, put out by Academic Y, that inform you with pride that in country X there is a flourishing, splendid diversity of opinion about Issue Z, with an amazing 1,437 newspapers (followed by many pie charts, showing that 17 percent are pro-Z, 24 are Z-moderates, etc.) …. and do not mention, “and there’s two TV stations, and 98 percent of the public gets “the news” from TV, and both of those stations never mention Z–ever)
… why, if you are Academic Y, you might conclude that Country X is having a really robust debate about Issue Z. Academic Y will be really surprised when he shows up and discovers, “Why, no one has heard of Issue Z. In fact, this is a totally lousy country to find a qualified high priestess to marry my purebred Pomeranian to a chimp in a controversial voodoo wedding ceremony. Most people here are anything but passionately for or against such a thing–they’ve never even heard that this is “a thing.” There’s no diversity of opinion about this at all. None. Because there’s no opinion, period. No one but the readers of those newspapers I’ve been studying has ever dreamt of such a thing.”
Swear to you, yes, “educated” people fall down this rabbit hole every time–it’s amazing. But anyway.
Before the Internet, there was a period I can remember clearly. I’m an eyewitness. I have no idea what really happened before this period. Definitely, I am not lying, there was a period during which Americans who took pride in being “educated” got their news from newspapers. I worked on some of them in the 80s and 90s, and there was definitely a culture associated with them. Some considered themselves “serious,” and to be “serious,” you had to have things like reporters, whose job was to see something with his or her own eyes, and say, “Seen it.” As well as, “counted it, got their names right, dragged my weary butt all the way over to the other side of town to see for myself whether the entire department store burned down, or whether it was just half of it, etc.”
And then this “copy” would be handled by “subs” who would know instinctively that something was wrong with the story if the guy was writing about the Bloomingdale’s on the Turnpike, and would know that they’d better call the guy to figure out just how drunk he was, and whether any of the rest of it could go in the paper–and if not, they’d have to figure out what else to put in that spot, because physically, something had to. Wire copy, maybe, or maybe it just became some other reporter’s lucky day, because his whole boring story about that new birdcage shop is going to run to the last line.
And you’d think, “OK, today’s paper will be, basically, boring. But I’m a pro. So the headline on that birdcage story is going to make this newspaper worthy of its reputation as “at least good enough to line a birdcage.”
So, we run the story about the new birdcages being self-cleaning or whatever. But we’d have been deeply–and I think properly–skeptical of the claim. And we’d run with a headline like this:
New Birdcage Threatens our Jobs
I am the anonymous tipster. So now you all know who’s to blame.
Wadham is an Oxford college, Edward :-)
It was in 1996. I went to Robin Hood Bay twice that year, and remember that better because it is near Whitby, where Dracula arrived in England.
The whole Oxford/Cambridge thing confuses me, to be honest.
Don’t tell anyone this, but I am more likely to remember a place in detail if a fictional vampire made landfall there and the first Church hymn in English was composed there than if a whole lot of sheepskin with names written on them came out of the place.
Ridiculous. This is how you do it:
BLAME ME, SAYS TIPSTER
I don’t necessarily agree. I think a headline that is intriguing could draw more people into clicking further to see what the post is about. Conversely, a completely self-explanatory post could make viewers not want to look further. Examples:
Lame post title “Why Republicans Nominate Losers”. Okay, maybe I’ll read the thread, but I already have a good idea of why this is so. Not likely to be anything new here. On the other hand, maybe if the post were:
A new post title might be “Ditch the Geezers and the It’s-My-Turn Candidates: Put Up Republican Nominees With Pizzazz!” Now I want to know what this poster thinks pizzazz is, why he thinks our candidates need it, and his opinion on what candidate can win the nomination and the presidency with it.
Of course, my biggest worry is that Claire will beat me senseless for disagreeing with her. My next biggest worry is that my wife will book a trip to Paris just for the thrill of watching it . . . sacré bleu!
Earlier this week, this headline had me cracking up:
“After 8 centuries, rats exonerated in spread of Black Death. Gerbils implicated.”
http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2015/02/24/after-8-centuries-rats-exonerated-in-spread-of-black-death-gerbils-implicated/
I immediately thought: (1) “The Rat Lobby has paid off the scientists to hang this on the poor gerbils” and (2) “Damn gerbils – I should have known it was those sneaky little SOBs!”