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Unless I’m missing something major, the article does not answer its headline question in any way. It just presents a bunch of examples but does not come to any
by hrbf 4y ago
Unless I’m missing something major, the article does not answer its headline question in any way. It just presents a bunch of examples but does not come to any conclusion.
- cratermoon 4y agoPar for the course with question titles. Betteridge's law of headlines says: "Any headline that ends in a question mark can be answered by the word no."[1]. That rule, however, doesn't apply to "why?" questions because they are not yes/no constructions. Nevertheless, there's an aspect of Betteridge's law at work here. Running a story that doesn't really have anything to it yet needing to meet production targets – in the old days, column-inches to fill, today, space to place ads. Reporters are required to produce a certain number of articles of a certain length per week. An honest headline would just say, in effect, that after looking into it, the reporter didn't find an answer. An honest headline might be OK in newsprint. Online, the drive for "engagement" requires a headline that will lure readers in, and thus sell ads. tl;dr money.
- cratermoon 4y agoForgot the reference: https://web.archive.org/web/20090226202006/http://www.technovia.co.uk/2009/02/techcrunch-irresponsible-journalism.html https://web.archive.org/web/20090226202006/http://www.techno...