Crappy Headlines

In today’s 24-7 news cycle, everyone with a web site or TV channel is constantly vying for our attention – which means headlines and leads are more important than ever. But lately, I’ve been feeling that the media either thinks we’re stupid, or they are too lazy to try and come up with a good, solid and accurate headline.

For example, a couple weeks ago I read an AP headline: Dungy hopes Manning recovers quickly from surgery. Really? That’s absolutely shocking that a head football coach would hope that his MVP Super Bowl-winning quarterback would recover quickly from surgery. How is that even “news?” Even if this is just a typical update story on Peyton Manning’s recovery, couldn’t they have done better? I don’t know about you, but that headline irritates me so much that I didn’t even bother reading the article.

Friday, post-gazette.com had an article in prominent placement on their home page titled Poverty leads to playing lottery, study says. So you mean being filthy rich and having more money than you know what to do with doesn’t cause you to play the lottery?! Get out of here! I didn’t read the article – I just wondered who authorized and spent money on such a stupid study that really just stated the obvious.

Sometime last fall, it was all over the news that Elisabeth Hasselbeck was taking a maternity leave from The View. She was pregnant with her second child at the time. It had to have been a slow news week for that to even be considered news – or a headline. What pregnant working woman doesn’t take a maternity leave? Now there’s something to write about – and an appealing headline!

And, I could go on and on with examples.

Today, Adele handed me a section from yesterday’s New York Times, and as I was glancing through it, I couldn’t help but love every single headline I read. From Putting the Dream Car Out to Pasture to Blogging’s Glass Ceiling to The Breakups That Got Under My Skin – they all enticed me and made me want to at least find out what the article was about.

Wait a minute – isn’t that the purpose of a headline?!

Maybe I’m just weird (wait – don’t answer that). I don’t know if it’s because I’m a marketer/writer that I notice these things, but better headlines would make the world such a much more interesting place. Or something like that