There’s a real art to writing headlines. I have to do it for Blackburnnews.com and to come up with something in four or five words is often a challenge.
You don’t have to use proper sentences, either. As with social media, choppy grammar is forgivable. But I still remember some terrible headlines of the past. “LADY DI DEAD” screamed The Toronto Sun in the summer of 1997. Really? That’s the best they could do? I still think a little tact and class are needed when announcing someone’s untimely demise. For Jim Flaherty I wrote “Jim Flaherty: 1949-2014”. It got the point across without being crass.
The misleading headline is my personal pet peeve. It’s just not necessary to suggest that something is bigger/worse/more dramatic than it is but it happens all the time.
This headline on the London Free Press website caught my eye a couple of weeks ago. Can you guess why?
There is no such thing as a felon or felony in Canadian law. It’s an American legal term. I imagine that the writer couldn’t fit “offender” in to such a small space, so they went with felon.
You’d expect a tabloid-style gossip outlet to keep the class factor dialed down to low, but TMZ does have credibility in the news world since they were the first to report the death of Michael Jackson. They’ve had other firsts since then and have to be given some respect for their ability to root out stories. But then they come up with something as lame as this.
I understand that the Kardashian/Jenners are big business but a zit on a teen? seriously???
Then again, People Magazine online will breathlessly report that some celebrity or other has cut their hair and ask readers to vote on whether they Love It or Leave It. So I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised.
The New York Daily News takes a different approach to headline writing. They give everything away in the longest headlines on the Internet. You make money with a website by getting people to click and view more pages so I don’t understand the point of giving it all away. But as a reader, I appreciate being able to get the latest New York City news with just a scan, and then moving on. Case in point:
Actually, the New York Daily News may have it right, in that their one headline serves multiple purposes immediately becoming their twitter and Facebook feed, 3 for 1!