Uncategorized

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Did Google Kill the Witty Headline?

Over at The Atlantic, David Wheeler has written about how difficult is it to write goofy, punny headlines in a time when Google values facts and keywords in headlines more than wit:

In a widely circulated 2010 article criticizing SEO practices, Washington Post columnist Gene Weingarten made the same point by citing a Post article about Conan O’Brien’s refusal to accept a later time slot on NBC. The print headline: “Better never than late.” Online: “Conan O’Brien won’t give up ‘Tonight Show’ time slot to make room for Jay Leno.”

The dearth of witty headlines on the Web is enough to make a copy editor cry. But rather than settle for a humorless future, some online editors are fighting back by refusing to embrace SEO guidelines for every story. “It’s not about getting the most readers; it’s about getting the ‘most best’ readers,” says David Plotz, editor of the influential online magazine Slate.

But Jake Brooks points out that, on a technological level, Wheeler is just plain wrong:

Since clicks are still every sites’ currency, copywriters online have to write one headline that will sell the story to the search engines and one headline that will sell the story to human beings. Turns out, doing the latter is not so easy. For print people, think about it this way: Every headline on a homepage is a wood headline. Every headline needs to sell. On any given day, a newspaper has to write at most 3 headlines to compel someone to buy the paper at the newsstand. Online, you have to do it FOR EVERY STORY.

Meanwhile, Dominic Litten delves more deeply into the villification of SEO in Wheeler’s article:

For many journalists, SEO = headline + keyword stuffing. It’s all they know. However, if journalists really want to know and understand how SEO can help them and their publications they should worry a lot less about the importance of headlines and focus on their company’s sitemaps, site architecture, endless duplicate content, internal linking and the like. But they won’t. Many journalists opine about headlines and keyword stuffing because that’s all the information their SEO team is giving them. And it’s all most care to know.

Stephen Colbert Uses His Powers for Good

Stephen Hoban describes how Stephen Colbert is using his platform to illustrate the ridiculousness of our political finance system:

This new reality that Stephen Colbert and his lawyer Trevor Potter keep bringing up in Stephen’s run-ins with Viacom is the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision from 2009, because Citizens United allows corporations to make unlimited political donations. Where once we feared that corporate money could be misused to buy elections, now we honor corporate money as free speech. (It’s not hard to predict that the effects of Citizens United could be as destructive as the deregulation of the banking industry in 1999. Many economists believe that deregulation led directly to the “Too Big to Fail” banks, the global financial crisis, and the bailout. Imagine something like that happening in politics.)

The Bloodbath at Fox

Last night, Fox canceled a ton of “bubble” shows (that is, shows whose ratings made their chances of renewal questionable), including The Chicago Code, one of my favorite new shows of the year (see my interview with creator Shawn Ryan). Alan Sepinwall tries to speak out against the Fox hate:

[H]ere is what I’ll say in FOX’s defense, even as I’m sad that my two favorite network pilots of this season – “Lone Star” and “The Chicago Code” – both failed in the same FOX timeslot (again, more on that in a bit): FOX takes chances. FOX tries the kinds of shows the other broadcast networks simply won’t. Because of the institutional legacy of “The X-Files,” for instance, FOX has continually tried to make science-fiction work in primetime to an extent that none of its competitors will try. Though the names of the people in charge of the network change, FOX consistently puts on shows that have more ambitious concepts than anyone else in broadcast. Yes, they canceled “Lone Star,” and “Firefly,” and “Arrested Development” and far too many other great (or potentially great) shows in the last decade alone, but they put those shows on the air in the first place, when NBC, ABC and CBS likely wouldn’t have.

We Don’t Spike the Football

David Remnick has written reflections on what Osama Bin Laden’s death means for our society. He also believes Obama handled this whole thing perfectly. I’m inclined to agree:

To some, it has seemed that Obama’s determination to avoid the vulgar and the cheap is a form of superiority, a bearing designed to make everyone else seem vulgar and cheap. But his seriousness is a welcome antidote to a political culture infected with self-congratulation, delusion, and paranoia. The United States has, at long last, dealt with Osama bin Laden. Dealing with his legacy will pose a still greater challenge. We remember the dead, as more die every day as a result of his example. Even now, on a clear day, far distant from the battlefield, we can still detect the smell of destruction that came through our windows for weeks after the towers fell. We hear the roaring of the jets. The political future should be entrusted only to those who honor that memory and refrain from exploiting it.