It’s all about the headline
Cory Bergman October 5th, 2007
Here’s a screen grab of CNN.com’s headline block from this morning. In my humble opinion, these are wonderful headlines crafted to get clicks:
Also, it’s interesting to note that these home page headlines are not the same as the respective story pages, so producers don’t have to worry about writing them for SEO.
Adds Kay in comments below: “The headlines might be well written to attract clicks, but the CNN redesign has added so many headlines to this area they have turned into a solid block of bold text that is difficult to scan, physically more difficult to read and easy to skip over…”
8 Comments Add your own
1. Kay | October 5th, 2007 at 9:03 am
The headlines might be well written to attract clicks, but the CNN redesign has added so many headlines to this area they have turned into a solid block of bold text that is difficult to scan, physically more difficult to read and easy to skip over.
Web producer should really look at the law of diminishing returns. I think the biggest mistake of this redesign is the home page. There is far too much there, it feels unorganized and the design is so difficult to scan.
I find myself having more and more difficulty taking in the content of this page. Before the redesign, I could scan this page and have a sense of that was going on in the world on any give day. Now (in addition to feeling that they are pandering with tabloid type stories and less substantial video reports), I can’t even scan it well.
If you want a test, look at the difference between the top headline areas on cbsnews.com and CNN.com. Look at the balance of the top story and the headlines list, the number of headlines and the space between the headlines list.
I really believe most people’s comprehension increases and they have a better reaction to a list that doesn’t feel overwhelming.
(Now, if you’re use to looking at a long list of AP stories in a newsroom computer, you have to try to put yourself into the shoes of the normal person who is checking a news site between meetings or other online activities. )
2. John Proffitt | October 5th, 2007 at 9:35 am
I’d be curious to know what headline formatting style web folks out there are using these days. My local paper uses the sentence case, just like the CNN example above.
But my in-house news people want us to use Title Case, in which every word except articles and connecting words are Capitalized. Both formats are considered legit, but what’s the feel out there amongst the Lost Remote community?
3. tdc | October 5th, 2007 at 10:23 am
well said, kay.
i thought it was my extreme case of dyslexia, so i was afraid to mention anything.
i’ll take a little different position than “it’s all about the headline” though. i think (for the locals) it’s all about what you do AFTER you get the click. are you content being a one-hit wonder? if the cnn deal hasn’t tied their hands, they’d do well to try to endear themselves to the viewer to return again and again.
alexa numbers indeed show this deal has had a positive effect on some, but not all, stations’ web channels. BUT the effect is short lived. i guess if you are from the camp where you don’t put all your eggs in a single basket you’d look (and figure out ways) to leverage these opportunities.
these are smart people though.
we’ll see.
4. adm | October 5th, 2007 at 10:46 am
they’ve been doing this for a while. there will be all kinds of major stories in the news, and you click over the CNN and it’s all about dogs getting CPR and strippers tackling thieves and so forth. and of those, 75% of the stories are either (a) video links or (b) links to local affiliates.
the video links are more irritating, because CNN most of the time does not provide a text alternative, and I have to sit through a story (or delay sitting through it, if I am at work) just to find out what happened when the dog got CPR.
making matters worse, in recent times they have dumbed down the headlines “below the fold,” too, so it’s getting increasingly hard to find hard news at CNN. it’s all “click bait.”
5. Steve Safran | October 5th, 2007 at 12:02 pm
Oh, come on. Have there ever been two better tease words than “Viagra hamster?”
6. Swift Loris | October 5th, 2007 at 6:16 pm
Sentence case vs. title case: From this ordinary viewer’s perspective, if a bunch of headlines are stacked tightly together as on the CNN site, sentence case is easier to read. Use title case only if there’s plenty of air around the headline.
7. NewMediaGuy | October 5th, 2007 at 7:33 pm
“U.S.-led forces call in air strikes, kill 25,” a great and clickable headline?
Not in any class I will ever teach or any desk I will ever work on.
It’s the whole story. What more do you need to know?
“Air Strikes & Mass Death Again.” Now maybe I might click.
8. Safran | October 6th, 2007 at 7:25 pm
I disagree. Old-school teases call for that. But a new media headline should tell the story and give us the choice of learning more. Fooling the audience into staying with us is SO TV.
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