Why Writers Don’t Write Headlines
Neil Sinhababu looks at a couple of recent examples of writers disavow unduly overheated headlines that were attached to their articles and wonders why writers don’t normally write their own headlines: “Headlines make a huge difference in how readers understand articles, especially if they’re voracious speed-reading bloggers.”
I’d say there are three kinds of reasons for this. One is that in traditional paper-and-ink production of a periodical, especially a newspaper, it’s not particularly feasible for the person who wrote the article to write the headline. If you think of a newspaper headline, well, the headline needs to fit certain kinds of space constraints. But the writer of the article can’t know, at the time he submits his copy, what the space constraints will be. Him turning the piece in is just the beginning of a process of editing and layout that eventually determines headline space. The headline-writing comes at the end of the story, when the reporter needs to be either asleep or drunk in order to start working the next day. Hence, it’s simply tradition that headlines are not written by editors.
Second, there’s virtue in necessity. The actual reason why newspaper articles are written in “inverted pyramid” style is related to the technical process of submitting copy via a telegraph and the expense of communicating back-and-forth between editors and reporters. It means, among other things, that you can always submit “too much” copy and then the editor knows he should just cut however many grafs from the end in order to make the story fit. But this actually turns out to be a way of presenting information that has appeal to some people. And now we have some web outlets basically aping the inverted pyramid style, even though the space constraints that made it necessary in the first place don’t apply. Similarly, once headline-writing became a semi-specialized function, it turned out that specialists could do a better job of headline-writing than could general writers.
Third, there’s a corrupt bargain. As a writer, you want to put together a responsible, defensible article. But you also want lots of people to read your article. An irresponsible, overblown headline can attract readers. But then you look irresponsible! The ideal scenario is for headline-writing to be someone else’s job. That way, they can err on the side of grabbing attention and if people complain you can always disavow it.
26 Responses to “Why Writers Don’t Write Headlines”
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March 19th, 2009 at 8:58 am
My old adviser was just about a year ago interviewed by a reporter from the AP about a recent paper that our lab published (having to do with limiting the replication of HIV in non T-cell resevoirs using commercially available anti-parasite drugs). He used a somewhat colorful metaphor describing HIV establishing itself as building a home with a fence, etc, and that it was our job to try and burn that house down.
The title the article recieved… HIV Races Through The Body Like Pacman.
March 19th, 2009 at 8:58 am
That Post front page just rules, there is no way anyone could possibly improve it (except maybe giving the bald detective a hat to wear).
March 19th, 2009 at 8:59 am
“TYPO CHALLENGED BLOGGER SPELS DOOME FOR GRAMMER!”
March 19th, 2009 at 9:05 am
I used to write headlines (at the beginning of the evening– and then went on to do proofreading on typeset copy after the headlines were written), and it’s all about fitting type into a specific space. Also, um, sometimes reporters may not get a whole lot of respect from sub-sub-editors. Not always a pretty picture down there.
March 19th, 2009 at 9:08 am
i enjoyed the “pussy whipped” headline today in the Post, and the story is pretty hilarious as well:
“Kenley Collins, the catty, batty finalist on “Project Runway,” really let the fur fly when she assaulted her now ex-fiancé with their pet feline in their Williamsburg apartment, authorities said yesterday.”
March 19th, 2009 at 9:22 am
Mmmmmmm interesting. Speaking of what people write…
Is there some secret ThinkProgress blog I don’t know about ?
Because while fully half of memorandum is discussing the word “Dodd” I’m 0 for 3 trying to find a single mention of it on the front page of any of the 3 blogs I know about here.
Got that memo out early did they.
I guess in the meantime we can listen to your thoughts on responsible vs irresponsible journalism.
March 19th, 2009 at 9:39 am
“TYPO CHALLENGED BLOGGER SPELS DOOME FOR GRAMMER!”
That one had me worried for a bit.
March 19th, 2009 at 9:55 am
All this time, I thought writers didn’t write headlines because they notoriously couldn’t spell “quantitative easing.”
March 19th, 2009 at 9:58 am
Please don’t advise bloggers to give up the inverted pyramid. I don’t have time to read all the words you guys write, but I do want to learn what I can about the issues you discuss.
March 19th, 2009 at 9:58 am
That NY Post headline is pretty tame by British tabloid standards.
I wish I had more control over my headlines, even though I’m pretty bad at writing them (especially for features, where I do have control). I write in a highly specialised field and on many occasions a sub-editor or the editor hasn’t given a misleading headline or failed to get what was most important about the story (the latter is partly my fault, of course), causing me considerable embarrassment, not to mention hassle from contacts and PRs. I do provide headlines for all my stories, except when it’s a cover story, because I know it will be overruled. But in a world where copy is filed late at night and pages are laid out in the early hours of the morning, it’s just not practical for journos to have final say on headlines. And it’s not entirely desirable, either. Headline style is part of a paper’s identity, and the sub-editors and editors are best placed to ensure uniformity (or at least compatibility) of style.
March 19th, 2009 at 10:05 am
ditto #9. when most of the story appears on another page, you don’t want to force them to turn the page to get to the meat of the article. The inverted pyramid is for the accessibility of the reader as much as the editor. Blabbery bloggers and articles could use a good inverted pyramid refresher.
March 19th, 2009 at 10:20 am
Indeed. When I first started out in journalism, pretty much the first thing they told us was that you lose 95% of your readers by the end of the first paragraph. It’s somewhat dispiriting, but it does drill home the importance of “who what where when”.
March 19th, 2009 at 10:31 am
I used to write headlines too, first for a newspaper and then for a MSN-ish portal website.
Matt’s points above are indeed valid. Headline writing is a LOT harder than people expect, mostly because you all have probably never been confronted with a headline-less story and a two-inch wide space in which to summarize the gist and tantalize the reader. Headlines always seem obvious when you’re looking at one.
Anyway, headlines on the web have drastically altered the art and craft of headline writing. In a newspaper, the customer has already purchased the product, and the point of the headline is primarily to inform (or, if you’re a commuter tabloid, make awesome puns). On the web, however, it’s all about getting people to click. Traffic often drives advertising rates, and headlines are often written specifically to trick readers into clicking.
So where a newspaper would just say ‘Oslo Named world’s Most Expensive City’, now the websites go with ‘What Is The World’s Most Expensive City?’ and you have to click to find out.
On our portal, we realized early on that any story with ‘Paris’ and ‘Hilton’ in the headline, in that order, would get 200,000 – 300,000 clicks in a few hours. So we trolled AP and other sources, looking for her and the other reliable click-getters. We had quotas to fill, so at the end of the month our site was 90 percent celebrity scandal and anecnews (’Cat dials 911′, etc) so we could get our bonuses.
At both newspapers and websites, headline-writing is more a corporate function than a journalistic function. Writers probably aren’t thinking of appealing to demographics and advertisers when they’re researching and writing the story, but the headline guys have to.
Complaining about misleading headlines is like lamenting that the trailer for ‘Pineapple Express’ spoiled all the funny parts. Of course it did, that’s its job.
March 19th, 2009 at 10:34 am
The newspaper where I worked published twice weekly – small town paper and all that – so the problem with the reporter being asleep or drunk doesn’t apply; the paper was usually finished by 7 p.m. or earlier of the day before publication. But reporters only actually wrote our own headlines in the news section about half the time or so as we left for meetings or interviews or just left early because deadline days were, obviously, the more frantic days of the week.
So basically, we got the best of both worlds. Headlines we wrote would be accurate, would only be as sensationalistic as we were comfortable with, etc. – but we could disclaim responsibility for the others.
March 19th, 2009 at 10:40 am
“On our portal, we realized early on that any story with ‘Paris’ and ‘Hilton’ in the headline, in that order, would get 200,000 – 300,000 clicks in a few hours.”
Christ, that’s depressing. Even more so than other celebrity news being popular.
“Complaining about misleading headlines is like lamenting that the trailer for ‘Pineapple Express’ spoiled all the funny parts. Of course it did, that’s its job.”
Yes and no. I’ve had plenty of misleading headlines that weren’t trying to be attention grabbing, it was just that the writer had misunderstood something in the story (like I say, partly my fault). And then of course there’s the cringeworthy ones where there’s a glaring typo in the headline. All that said, I have huge respect for talented and attentive headline writers. It’s a very rare skill.
March 19th, 2009 at 10:57 am
“YGLESIAS IN CATFIGHT WITH PARIS HILTON’S PUSSY!”
March 19th, 2009 at 11:22 am
Newspaper headlines are so 20th Century. I’m getting to be a connoisseur of the cable-news chyron.
March 19th, 2009 at 11:57 am
“HIV Races Through The Body Like Pacman.”
That sad thing is, that makes me want to read the article.
March 19th, 2009 at 12:06 pm
Presumably the ghosts are T-cells and the power pills are antigens?
March 19th, 2009 at 12:36 pm
I noted a while ago that on the sports headline, using a pun is pretty much standard practice. When you think about it, by and large the article is really going to either be about the team winning or losing, so instead of day after day of “Lakers win” or “Lakers lose,” you get “Kobe Brings the Beef” or “Andrew Playing By Numbers” and such.
By extension, I’ve wondered why wire service reports about the Middle East don’t do the same thing. It’s pretty much always some kind of variant on be “Bomb explodes in ____,” “Talks break down in _____,” “Refugees suffer in ____”. It might brighten things up if they started thinking of puns to use with “Gaza” and “Hizbollah.”
March 19th, 2009 at 12:48 pm
BTW, one of the greatest feats I can recall of sports reporting puns was last month on the local L.A. news the night of the Oscars, when the sportscaster worked in references to damn near every movie nominated for an Oscar into his report. He started off by calling somebody who earned a bunch of money a “Slumdog Millionaire” and made easy references to “Iron Man” and “The Wrestler,” but things started really getting weird when he worked in “The Reader,” “Tropic Thunder,” “Wall-E,” a team being on a “Revolutionary Road” to victory, someone drinking their “Milk,” a team being “Happy-Go-Lucky,” etc. Definitely the first time I’d seen a Mike Leigh movie mentioned during a sports report.
March 19th, 2009 at 4:28 pm
Fourth: writing headlines is an entirely different skill from writing articles. (A grossly unappreciated skill, IMO.)
Headlines that misrepresent their articles are simply badly-written headlines (and factors such as time and space constraints tend to contribute to this, but still: a good headline writer will get the gist of the story in it). Letting reporters write their own headlines might well make them more representative of the content, but it would also produce headlines that were badly-written in other respects.
Full disclosure: my late father worked for many years as a copy editor on the San Francisco Examiner (back when it was actually a newspaper). Hence my appreciation for the headline writer’s art.
Incidentally, my all-time favorite sports headline ran on October 17, 1990, about the A’s being shut out in the first game of the World Series: “Bay Area Rocked by 7-0″.
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April 16th, 2009 at 10:13 pm
Hi everyone. Sometimes when you innovate, you make mistakes. It is best to admit them quickly, and get on with improving your other innovations.
I am from Denmark and also am speaking English, give please true I wrote the following sentence: “Spirit airlines carrier with limited service between.”
Regards :p Frieda.