Link-Bait Journalism

No doubt, you have read many articles from various outlets complaining about the depreciating quality of news and journalism. It seems that one of the most commonly reported topics on journalism outlets is the poor quality of other journalistic outlets. Everyone with a pen, or a keyboard, seems to find themselves qualified to rant and rave about the quality of journalism: "Opinion pieces are being sold as facts! The most common news source in America is 'this thing I read somewhere online!' Smurfs go skiing on the trend graphs for newspaper readership!" Blah Blah Blah. These complaints are often scathingly ironic, (see: people who get all their news from The Daily Show complaining about Fox News), and are usually perpetuated by people with no journalistic credibility. The one thing about these complaints that is most interesting, however, is that they are true. 

Despite how ironic it is that a blog written by teenagers should be complaining about the quality of modern journalism, we cannot help but point out this fact: journalism today is decreasingly an issue of delivering news and explaining concepts and increasingly an attempt to create a constant stream of sometimes meaningless headlines shooting into our information devices like ticker tape. In short, news is turning into Twitter. 

Most readers may assume that this is leading into a stern talking-to of some major television news outlet, possibly one that rhymes with "socks chews." While we will most likely get to FOX and its mentally incapacitated cousin, CNN, in the future, we would instead like to talk about a broader trend in journalism that is prevalent among all outlets: link-bait journalism. In order to benefit from the the twitter-izing of news, many news organizations have begun to create headlines that inflate the sensational qualities of the articles they precede. A great example of this is an article from "Newsweek" that caused quite a controversy: 

Still better than "President Abducted By Gay UFO."

While the article was actually about how the President said he supports gay marriage, and not about him being gay himself (studies show it is possible to support gay causes without being gay), that vital information is trivial when compared to the importance of selling millions of magazines. Another great source for your everyday misleading-sensational-contentless-headline-needs is Time magazine, who has published so many link-bait headlines, we needed a table to display them all:

Subject of Article:	Headline Used:
Larger Online Colleges	"College Is Dead. Long Live College!"
Computers becoming increasingly intelligent	"2045: The Year Man Becomes Immortal!"
Why Israeli people care about peace, in addition to other things like health care and education	"Why Israel doesn’t care about peace"
Jennifer Aniston’s new haircut and its popularity	"Earth-Shattering News!"

This is only a tiny fraction of the number of misleading headlines and titles used by Time. In fact, nearly every headline used by Time magazine is overly sensational in some way, as this has become the rule, not the exception, for popular magazines. We had a lot of fun imagining what Time might come up with next.

Subject of Article:	Possible Headline:
Statistics on readership of  humor site Cracked.com	"America’s Growing Crack Addiction"
Essay on underrated Hitchcock film Murder! (1930)	"Why We Need More  Murder"
Video of Rick Astley’s “Never  Gonna Give You Up”	"America Declares War On China"
Time Magazine writer bored, desperate for money to fuel  his/her drug addiction	"Earth Shattering News!"

Reading link-bait journalism can have an upsetting effect on me as a reader. I have found that after reading an article in Time or Newsweek, I am often disappointed at the lack of carnage that will ensue from the event described. Midway through the article, I find myself thinking: "Oh, so mankind is not doomed to an eternal war of bloody hellfire, like the title said. It's just a new video game. Dang." I guess I would rather see mankind perish than be disappointed by a headline. Either that or Newsweek makes me a horrible person.      

I'm not saying that magazines need to have boring, bland headlines that turn people away. I do have to hand it to Time. They're incredibly creative in their headline-authoring, and interesting headlines are a necessary trait for good publications. Time is using its artistic licence, after all, which is a god-given right among writers. I'm just saying they should have content-related headlines that pull readers in to the actual story, not to what readers think the story will be about. I hope that after reading this, my readers won't overreact and think: "Oh god, do I have to start reading The Economist, now? Do I have to get a real newspaper and read the entire thing, everyday? Why don't I just go back to college and study comparative classical literature while I'm at it?" No, not at all. I just think it would be worthwhile to read the articles in the magazines before telling everyone to get to their bomb shelters because China is about to nuke the crap out of the eastern seaboard.

Honey, get the green tea and math textbook, we're being invaded!

But really, this decrease in journalistic integrity is no fault of the readers. It really just comes down to the quality of the journalism itself, and that can be easily rectified by the news organizations. Rather than spend time and energy devising headlines that cover up a news organization's lack of good journalism, they should spend their energies writing good articles. Interesting, informative, enlightening, even revolutionary. These are adjectives that used to define good articles, and are still possible to achieve in writing today. But turning uninteresting, non-stories into apocalyptical fear-mongering is the antithesis of good journalism, and it hinges on tabloid material.

Still better than "Obama is the first gay President."

Written by Abe Clark, Oct 21, 2012.