The OMG Factor

I thought the Huffington Post's headlines had gotten just a touch better recently, a little better focused, somewhat more accurate. But the OMG approach still does it in at times. On a video clip of a seriously botched football game--high school, mind you, headlined:

Worst High School Football Play Ever (VIDEO)

there was this response, among many others:

Dear HuffPost,

You have the worst headlines EVER. Now, see how frustrating that is?
Isn't it annoying when someone comes along and pretends to be the
end-all-be-all authority on everything BEST and WORST? Wouldn't it make
more sense to just say something like, "Funny High School Video Fail
Discovered By Our Crackerjack Sports Gurus" ... or something to that
affect? Better yet, how about you hire some legitimate sports
journalists and stop wasting our time posting fluff pieces to this sight
that seem more tailor made for an audience of six year-olds.

What many sloppy operations don't realize is that this sloppy work is like crying wolf; after a while, no one, not even the most casual reader, believes anything you post.

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.

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.

Another Swing and a Miss at the Huffington Post

I've reached the point where I can only assume that the Huffington Post is deliberately misstating the facts of stories. It happens too often, when the stories are clear, for it to be an error.

I guess this is a case of wanting to grab eyeballs instead of reporting accurately. Eventually, that lack of accuracy catches up with an operation; if you poke around the Web, you'll see a lot of criticism of HuffPost headlines. I've simply reached the point where I don't believe the headlines until I've seen the story.

Here's today's latest:

Ben Nelson Now Says Health Care
Reform Was 'Mistake'

No. He didn't. It wouldn't make sense. What he said was that making health care the priority in 2009 was a mistake. Here's the story:

Sen. Ben Nelson said Tuesday it was a mistake for the Obama Administration to take on massive health care reforms in 2009, and suggested efforts would have been better spent addressing the economy.

This was an easy one. Move the "now" which is superfluous anyway, over after "reform" to indicate a time element. Write, "Ben Nelson Says Jobs, Not Health Care, Was Bigger Priority"

Or any number of other choices.

Please, HuffPost, hire some copy editors. It's not as if they're not available. You could start by looking here:
New York Times News Service

Los Angeles Times-Washington Post News Service


Minneapolis Star Tribune


Media General

La Palma

Dangle Me This

If the Huffington Post really wants to become a major journalism site, it should hire some editors who would, among other things, eliminate danglers:

As a co-architect of the federal Cash For Clunkers (CFC) program and advisor to various congressional offices on the issue, it is gratifying to see how quickly it has been adopted by the American people. CFC achieves multiple goals -- it stimulates auto sales while increasing the efficiency of the U.S. fleet.

The Disrespect Never Ends

When people write stuff like this, I can only guess that it is ignorance and not malice. A copy editor who has just lost his job complains about the lack of standards on the web; this is the response:

Why Didn't the P-I Fold Sooner?

Is it new? Yes. Is it scary? If you're over 30. Is it better? For the love of God, yes.

So I'm not mourning the "loss" of the P-I. I'm raising my glass to their new opportunity to make an even better publication. May they have many, many happy years.

Saying you're sorry that people have lost their jobs and then dismissing what they say suggests you're more interested in your words than in what they said.

Here's what the newly unemployed copy editor said:

Glenn Ericksen, Copy Editor for the P-I, said the Web "lowers the standard of literacy all around. Who needs copy editors on the Web?"

And when you have people like Sam Zell say essentially the same thing--that writers can write and post their stuff to the web without any editors--copy editors have a right to be upset, not only because of the loss of their jobs but because of the loss of respect and value for their work. You cannot seriously argue that stories on the web are edited as well as print. And the P-I staff went from 170 jobs, many union, to 20, none union. Whoo-hoo, let's throw a party.


This is not the first person to so cavalierly dismiss what copy editors are saying or pretend it's just an issue of technology. It is not. And it is most definitely not an age issue, though younger writers sometimes try to label it as one. I personally like a lot of things about news web sites, including the idea of continuous updates, just as older newspapers used to put out multiple editions for street sales. It's invigorating, it's journalism as it can be. But what this copy editor is saying is that it's a matter of believing that what we do matters, that web sites ought to pay attention to what we have to offer but they too often don't in the rush to do everything on the cheap. And, oh, yeah, people who have just lost their jobs should be cut some slack.

The Rush to Judgment

Having had my own little experience of reporting something recently when some key detail was still in question, I was particularly intrigued by Doug Fisher's thorough assessment of the Huffington Post's reporting on the Clinton campaign hostage story. (And h/t to John McIntyre for flagging this.)

The web affords us enormous opportunities for reporting, multimedia presentations, alerting people to emergencies and so on. But what shouldn't be lost is the need for reporting, for digging up the facts accurately and not rushing to publish something we don't know.

As disconcerting as it can be, I have become a fan of the idea of posting something and then going back and adding "strikeouts" to correct information and to alert people that something may have been wrong. It gives people a look at the process, which, while not always necessary, can be useful and helps keep us honest.

The Huffington Post's reporting on this story was abysmal--the rush to publish without knowing the facts. There has been a tendency in recent years to simply publish whatever bits of information can be found--if we can find that a killer got a parking ticket 5 years ago, let's publish that! If we think maybe a guy with a mental problem is the hostage taker, let's publish everything his wife and neighbors have to say about him, the facts be damned! I guess we learned nothing from the unfortunate story of the late Richard Jewell. Where were the Huffington editors?

In my case, I wrote about the firing of an editor in Santa Barbara and asked whether he might be the same person I'd worked with in the past. Someone wrote to say no; I used strikeouts and then dug around a lot more to verify that the editor was who I thought he was. Raising questions and letting people know that you're checking on yourself is one thing. To, in effect, accuse someone of committing a crime is quite another, I would think. I don't know the source of Huffington's reports--did the incorrect name come from the mainstream press? I hope not.