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Off-topic, but these kind of headlines drive me nuts... the Partial Clickbaitisation Of Everything. Like, "Mountains Aren't the Shape You Think," are they not?
by genmon 11y ago
Off-topic, but these kind of headlines drive me nuts... the Partial Clickbaitisation Of Everything. Like, "Mountains Aren't the Shape You Think," are they not? How do you know what shape I think mountains are? The headline is needlessly provocative, the story is interesting enough without dressing it up like Buzzfeed-authored Facebook fodder.
I understand this is how the web works, it's attention economics and so shared headlines need to create traffic (which will convert into more shared headlines and so on). But I guess I'm wistful for the "inverted pyramid" of newspaper journalism where the headline was the condensed summary of the whole story, and imparting information took priority over attempting to produce an infantile grab response. And it's fine for natively clickbait publications to do this (Buzzfeed is a fine publication!), but sad when the same pattern is used by media outlets and blogs that shouldn't need to.
You Won't Believe What This Grumpy Old Man Has To Say About Modern Trends In Headlines On The Web.
- jacquesm 11y ago> But I guess I'm wistful for the "inverted pyramid" of newspaper journalism where the headline was the condensed summary of the whole story, and imparting information took priority over attempting to produce an infantile grab response. I don't think that's been true for a long time, headlines on newspapers (especially on the front page) are carefully crafted to sell papers.
- genmon 11y agoDefinitely, but there's still a core of summarising the story. As an example, check out the headlines on this local newspaper: http://www.advertiserandtimes.co.uk http://www.advertiserandtimes.co.uk TORY TRIUMPH AS VOTERS STAY BLUE Jon runs 50k to mark RNLI’s golden year Train suicide soldier was saying ‘sorry’ to girlfriend as he died The front page acts as a kind of static Zooming User Interface, where I can apprehend the low-res information from a distance, and the detail appears as I lean in and read.
- Loughla 11y agoNo, it's still a thing. The headline conveys the general idea/summary of the article, the first paragraph conveys the most meat, and information gets more and more 'fluffy' from there. Headlines are carefully crafted to sell papers, but definitely convey a message. So, for example you get (from the NYT today) "Banks Admit Scheme to Rig Currency Price"; "ISIS Seizes a City Pivotal in Syria and in History"; "Rallying Cry in Anti-Test Movement: 'Opt Out'; and "Kentucky G.O.P. Left in Disarray by a Close Race." Instead of: "You'll never believe what these bankers were caught doing"; "Four things ISIS is famous for"; "Teachers want your kids to skip these tests?!?"; "5 reasons the Kentucky G.O.P is in Disarray". See the difference?
- mcphage 11y ago> I guess I'm wistful for the "inverted pyramid" of newspaper journalism As a new study in Newspaper Journalism Change shows, the shape of newspaper journalism is much more complicated. Every newspaper article might eventually start at a peak, but on the way back, it might flatten into expansive plateaus or set from a sharp decrease into a slow decline towards the end. By analyzing the area of newspapers as length increased, Princeton doctoral student Paul Elsen and his colleague Morgan Tingley (now an assistant professor at University of Connecticut) identified four different shapes that describe how newspapers behave. And, they found, the traditional "inverted pyramid" shape, that fits journals like The Wall Street Journal, actually describes only a minority of newspaper articles.
- genmon 11y agoI see what you did there
- scblock 11y agoYep. I live in Denver and clicked that and was pretty much told that the Rockies are indeed the shape I think. Interesting article but the headline is bad.