The Worst Kind of News Headline on the Internet

Hints about the story aren’t enough

Bad news headlines are floating around the Internet, your honor. Accordingly, I present exhibits A, B, C, D and E, from Google and MSN news roundups, copied just as they appeared with their originating publishers in parentheses:

A. NFL World Reacts to Sunday’s Russell Wilson News (The Spun) B. Students react to future jumbotron at Hayward Field (KEZI) C. NFL World Reacts to Terry Bradshaw’s Brutally Honest Admission (The Spun) D. NFL World Reacts to Monday’s Jim Harbaugh News (The Spun) E. NFL World Is Surprised by What Tom Brady Admitted (The Spun)

The common themes are hard to miss: 1. The “NFL World” is doing a lot of reacting. (If you’re unfamiliar with American sports, the NFL is the National Football League.) 2. Reacting among sports fans and followers appears to be rampant. 3. A sports website called The Spun is on top of this reacting, though one Oregon television station is claiming some territory for itself.

And here’s the big one: 4. All these headlines are purposefully vague because the stories probably would have a lot fewer readers if the headlines stated the actual news instead of just hinting at it. Why? It’s because the stories themselves are rather thin and sometimes don’t say much beyond what a newsy headline would.

Are these headlines clickbait? That depends on your definition. Merriam-Webster gives us its version:

something (such as a headline) designed to make readers want to click on a hyperlink especially when the link leads to content of dubious value or interest

By that definition, I would argue that these examples are probably not classic clickbait because the news in the stories could be valuable and interesting to sports fans.

Still, I think these are terrible, dishonest headlines because they encourage readers to click when there would be far less incentive to do so if the wording were more forthcoming. In other words, the truth was deliberately withheld. And if such headlines shared the news, not just hints, The Spun’s web traffic might plummet. Oh well.

More than a few headlines

Reading this far, you might assume 1.) I’m just another disgruntled sports fan and/or 2.) hypercritical of the news media.

So here’s my disclosure on point 1: I am a sports fan, though definitely on the softer side. I calmly accept a lot of decisions and results that rile up others. Of course, I’m not pleased when my teams and favorite athletes don’t do well, but I don’t comment on the Internet or vent to the teams, athletes, or TV announcers.

My disclosure on point 2 is more complex: I am critical of bad performances in the news media, especially headlines because I have some expertise on the matter, quite a lot actually. With the exception of a couple of youthful years, I spent my entire working life in newspaper journalism in the Pacific Northwest of the United States, first as a reporter, then as an editor with various responsibilities too numerous and complicated to detail here.

In my newspaper editing days, I wrote thousands of headlines. Once I came up with a pretty good estimate of 50,000 headlines through a certain part of my career. Then I figured in all the years and updated the count to about 70,000.

I realize this number sounds ridiculous, but if I gave you all the boring and supporting details over the years, it would seem pretty reasonable. The exact count doesn’t matter because there are no gold medals and record books for this sort of work. I put out this number in the thousands only to establish that I know a thing or two about news headlines.

Printed newspaper headlines are much harder to write than Internet headlines for several reasons:

1.) Large font sizes usually don’t allow many words, especially longer ones.

2.) Narrow columns often make it difficult to write anything sensible, whereas Internet headlines are more free range. Even so, the newspaper headline writer must produce something sensible.

3.) The newspaper headline writer, especially at larger organizations, often has little to no influence over the page design that dictates font sizes, widths and number of lines.

4.) The newspaper has its own style, which can forbid such infractions as random abbreviations and acronyms, lines ending with prepositions, unfamiliar names and so on. In other words, the rules make it easier for readers and harder for headline writers.

5.) Assuming that we’re talking about one of the many reputable U.S. metro newspapers, the headline must be in good taste, and it must be accurate and track with the story. In the small space available, it should tell as much about the story as possible, even if indirectly, but not oversell the story and become false advertising. Basically, the headline should be honest and true.

So perhaps you can see why news headlines still catch my attention, especially when I see bad ones. That is all.

If you need a quick hit, here’s a 1-minute read under 150 words.