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> how do you decide that something is clickbait without clicking it? It's easy. The headline should tell the whole story: "Acme Widget stock down 2.5%"
by combatentropy 10y ago
> how do you decide that something is clickbait without clicking it?
It's easy. The headline should tell the whole story:
"Acme Widget stock down 2.5%"
"CERN sientists discover Higgs Boson"
"Smith and Jones tied in polls"
There is no mystery ("Acme Widget stock makes startling change"). While there's not much room for detail, still: 1) I know what the article is about, 2) I know whether I would be interested in the rest, and 3) I can get a summary of the day's happenings just by skimming the headlines. This was the original purpose of headlines and one of the main reasons for the article itself following a structure called the Inverted Pyramid. The headline told the whole story, just in outline. The first sentence of the article told the whole story again, just with a little more detail. The first paragraph covered the whole story again, in yet more detail. Want more details? Keep reading paragraphs. You can stop at any time. Your only loss is some detail. Compare that to the circuitous, long-winded introductions of many blogs, where the writer finally gets to the point about two thirds through.
Clickbait deliberately withholds information, instead of giving all it can in the room that it has. Clickbait churns up questions, headlines give answers. Clickbait lures you into a story that, in the end, was not interesting to you. Headlines help you know whether the story will be interesting to you or not.
- chaz 10y agoNews stories are different from editorial, opinion, informational, entertainment, etc. articles. For example, the top article on Google News for me right now is a NYT editorial: "The Jobs Report Is Not Quite as Terrible as It Looks." If I saw that on old-fashioned newsprint while skimming down the page, I would definitely stop and read it. I also clicked the article to read the story on GN. Is it clickbait? How would you retitle this article? http://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/04/upshot/the-jobs-report-is-not-quite-as-terrible-as-it-looks.html http://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/04/upshot/the-jobs-report-is-...
- combatentropy 10y ago> How would you retitle this article? I don't think the headline is clickbait: "The Jobs Report Is Not Quite as Terrible as It Looks." It's vague, yes, but it would be hard to cram much more into the headline. If you read the article, the reasons he gives for "why the jobs report is not quite as terrible as it looks" is a hodgepodge of unrelated things: (a) the report's margin of error is 100,000; (b) a three-month average is better; (c) a wave of people are retiring; and (d) "as the economy approaches full employment, jobs growth must slow." It's hard to summarize it better than: "The Jobs Report Is Not Quite as Terrible as It Looks Because . . . It's Complicated" (haha) or maybe "The Jobs Report Is Down From Last Time But As Expected for a Mature Economy." More descriptive, but kind of a clunker. I didn't say writing tight headlines was easy. Either way, I am not irritated at all by the original headline, because it gives me an accurate indication of whether I would read the rest of the article. In my case, I wouldn't. I look at the economy like the weather: complex, hard to predict, and of little effect on me unless it's really bad. > News stories are different from editorial, opinion, > informational, entertainment, etc. articles. I agree. Sometimes you're in the mood for a rambling essay. Some things are complicated or indeterminate and cannot be easily summed up.