Perspective (and Accurate Headlines) Matter

Two things here.  I see no indication or mention of a "compromise" on changing the ban on gays serving in the military.

The other issue is that it's important to give some context to Don't Ask, Don't Tell. When President Clinton pushed for DADT, it was considered radical and pro-gay. The military and the rightwingers were adamantly opposed to allowing gay people to serve at all and regularly pursued people on suspicion of homosexual leanings. DADT has many flaws, including the matter of not protecting people as much as was intended, but it's tremendously misleading to suggest that Clinton created a ban on gays.

White House eyes compromise on gays in military

PHILIP ELLIOTT | May 24, 2010 01:36 PM EST | AP

WASHINGTON — The White House is talking with gay rights activists, lawmakers and Pentagon officials about a push to hasten the repeal of a ban on gays and lesbians serving openly in the military.

The group was meeting Monday at the White House to discuss a faster pace to end the Clinton-era ban on openly gay service members. Lawmakers are expected to introduce legislation this week that would repeal the "don't ask, don't tell" policy this year – sooner than expected – although implementation would have to await a Defense Department review.

If Congress approves the repeal, it would still take several years before gays and lesbians could serve openly while the Pentagon writes a policy based on its review.

Mojo in the Morning Headlines

David Carr has a good piece about headlines, SEO issues and more in The New York Times. He uses a very clever, SEO-magnet of a headline that both makes his point and underscores the problem with many online heads. He also, as he frequently does, identifies an issue and carries the discussion of it a bit further than the rest of us have managed to do. (In this case, readers count a lot less than machines.)

But back to my little narrower focus on online headlines. Though I complain loudly about Huffington Post headlines (and those on other sites, as well, some of which lately have been grabbing for the lowest-common denominator), my complaint isn't that they're written for search engines. I understand that issue; I understand that online and print headlines will often be quite different because their mechanics, if not their goals, are different. And yes, I know sites use different metrics for measuring readers: some people (perhaps most) are drawn by searching for a topic; others go to a news site to dial around and read what's there. And the latter group is precisely why I think heads need to be both SEO friendly and readable on their own.

My issue with many sites is their flat-out inaccuracy, which, oddly, Carr doesn't address all that much. I'm glad, though, that he got Arianna Huffington to go on the record saying SEO wasn't the main standard (which I find hard to believe since they so carefully measure hits on different headlines.)  For example, the HuffPost stayed with a double-entrendre headline making a claim that had been debunked hours and hours earlier, which is ancient in online terms, for, it would seem, the benefit of drawing SEO results, not telling the story accurately.  The story originated at the New York Post.

Lest you think I'm just a cantankerous editor, read the comments from many readers complaining about how they don't trust HuffPost heads. Or don't look for the comments. Read them yourself. (See? Cantankerous.)

This isn't a matter of tone or political agenda; this isn't about using "fiend" or "thug" or "Billary" in a headline to make a political or social comment. It's about trust. I still believe the best news sites will mesh accuracy and clever online writing and SEO standards. After all, at some point, people get tired of inaccuracy and stop visiting. And the search engines know very well when they've been conned (that's why putting "sex" as a keyword in all your stories about, say, the federal budget, ultimately leads Google to ignore your site, which you definitely want to avoid.)

What is noteworthy about Carr's headline is that it works, it catches the search engines and it accurately reflects the story. It doesn't tell the story, which is another issue but it doesn't have to (and I don't think they always had to in print, either.) That it works separates it from so many awful online headlines.

So, too, does the cited "Headless Body in Topless Bar." That headline works anywhere, any place, and despite our initial shock when it first appeared, it tells you EXACTLY all you need to know about the story; if you want to read more, you can. It worked in print; it would work tomorrow online.

We know that lovely headlines that depend on insider knowledge or fine twists of phrase or puns or other tricks that we can admire in print don't work online, any more than long-winded anecdotal ledes on stories hold up.

I hope no one's arguing that anymore. But really, readers? Don't you read the headline and count on them to be factual? Or do you slavishly let Google tell you what to read and hope that just maybe the headline is right?
Who knows anymore. Maybe it doesn't matter and Carr's idea that we as readers of words don't matter as much as the machines do. I hope that's not the case.

And I'll leave you to judge the worthiness of my very SEO-friendly headline and it's relationship to what I've written.

Following the Polling

Nate Silver has two items this week that are of particular interest to editors
wanting to get polling right.

The  oil spill question.

And, reflecting his grounding in baseball stats, he's got an especially interesting, if not completely scientific, take on the liberal value of Elena Kagan and Diane Woods, rooted in age and longevity.

What Silver is especially good at is delving into the numbers and avoiding the horse-race qualities of most poll reporting.

Mad? Yeah, Sure, in a Rather Ineffective Way

I do believe this headline says just the opposite of what's intended. Unharnessed anger (and did they really mean "unbridled"?) would be out-of-control anger.

Unharnessed anger: Incumbents win in NC, OH, IN 

This story says that, while people are mad, it wasn't focused enough to upend the incumbents.

 

 

Again With the Headlines

For the record, none of the comments on this Huffington Post story about Capt. Sullenberger are mine. But these kind of complaints have become standard on this site, which makes me that much more certain that writing misleading headlines is a policy, not an accident.
 From VT, at the HuffPost, any photo will do, apparently, until there's a lawsuit.

Arianna Huffington, Fix This Problem.

Dear Arianna:

   Please, please please fix your headlines. It's bad enough that your headline writers regularly overstate the story, make casual errors or prove to be so disconnected from the facts that  that I simply skip to the text before believing anything and view the headline with disgust.

But it's a problem of another magnitude  when, in the midst of a very heated and ugly debate, your headline writer confuses a band of drug smugglers with illegal immigrants and ends up linking immigrants to the shooting of a cop.

(For the record, since I see this story has been updated a number of times, the headline on the early story read "Arizona Deputy Shot, Illegal Immigrants Suspected" but made no mention of undocumented people or suspects, and simply referred to drug smugglers.)

You've got to address this problem. Until then, your site is just another unreliable site pretending to do journalism. Hire some decent editors.

Update: This is from the Arizona Republic and underscores the need to get these descriptions right. After much discussion of the drug smuggling in the area where the deputy was wounded, and of the new immigration law, the Republic reports this:

Pinal County Lt. Tami Villar said Friday's incident "sends a very powerful and loud message that we have a problem." She added that the shooters are Hispanic men who "appear to be undocumented."

So, no one has been arrested; no one is identified but they "appear to be undocumented."  Are smugglers also illegal immigrants? I think that stretches the definition and confuses two groups of people with very different agendas. The very last thing to worry about when it comes to drug smugglers, I'd think, would be their right, or lack of it, to enter the country. But it certainly plays nicely into the stereotype that "illegals" are something to be feared, doesn't it?