Words in Headlines Mean More

nthmost — Thu, 30 Jul 2009 11:04:25 +0000

Headlines serve an obvious purpose of attracting attention, being the signpost to further reading. But in the context of a readership heavily disinclined to study the angles and dig deeper — indeed, to even read the entire article itself — a heavy responsibility now falls on the headline to assert the article’s core truth claims and frame the content accurately. In essence, the entirety of journalistic integrity now rests upon the semantics of signposts.

Increased attunement to the shaping of headlines with respect to the article’s content and truth claims put the following Reuters article, Organic Food is No Healthier, Study Finds, into my disapproving purview.

This article (also posted on MSN) describes a study done on the nutritional content based on vitamin and mineral availability in conventional versus organically grown produce.

The headline’s truth statement skews both the issue of what’s “healthy” about food and puts the content in a certain expectational framework not found in the content.

An excerpt (emphasis mine):

“A small number of differences in nutrient content were found to exist between organically and conventionally produced foodstuffs, but these are unlikely to be of any public health relevance,” said Alan Dangour, one of the report’s authors. “Our review indicates that there is currently no evidence to support the selection of organically over conventionally produced foods on the basis of nutritional superiority.”

Any journalist in the health arena knows full well, or should, that the consumer decision to gravitate towards “more healthy” produce has very little to do with alleged tallies of vitamins and minerals, and everything to do with the fear of contamination with pesticides, antimicrobials, and other lovely value-added proposals that may or may not decrease the overall well-being of oneself and one’s family. The true question of organic purchasing is not, “is this food more nutritious than the cheaper food”, but rather, “is all the extra gook they grew and shipped this produce with going to outweigh the goodness of this vegetable I’m going to the trouble to buy, prepare, and eat?”

Whenever an article’s headline makes such a slight but meaningful shift away from its contents’ truth claims, I have to think at least one of the following things about the writer of the article:

He doesn’t consider the headline to be part of the truth statements made in the article — in other words, all semantics are fair play, words are fully interchangeable, etc.
She doesn’t actually understand the semantics of her own article.
He doesn’t particularly care about the truth claims of his article.

…none of which serve to recommend the writer in question too well.

The point of all this polemic: WORDS MEAN THINGS — even the words meant to draw attention to other words.

What’s at stake here? Why care?

Most people only read the headlines (consider the popularity of Twitter). And those who read further will have the information they were seeded with in the headline framed by that initial statement. And in the morning at the watercooler, that’s the information, the core truth statement, that will get passed around.

The headline could have read, “Organic food no more nutritious…” and would have reflected much more accurately the study’s results. Sure, it’s not quite as snappy, but it’s more honest journalism.

Headlines are arguments too — arguably the most potent and far-reaching ones you will write. Consider them carefully… just as I’ve considered the headline to this blog post.

Twitter Trending as Publicity Stunt

nthmost — Mon, 02 Mar 2009 07:16:37 +0000

Right at this moment, Skittles.com is capitalizing on the ability to find every Twitter post that includes the word "skittles" to power their front page. The trend has blown up to the point where people are registering usernames like "skittlenigga" just to have every single post they make show up on the front page of Skittles.Com.

(Update: Agency.com may have copped this technique from a stunt by Modernista.)

What’s the point of this? And why is it working? (#skittles is presently the number one keyword on Search.Twitter.Com)

people want to be seen, and know they will be seen if they use the world "skittles"
people are going to post links to skittles.com to explain what’s going on AND improve their chances of being seen
endless opportunities for horrible puns on Skittles’ "taste the rainbow" tagline
no matter what is said about Skittles, it’s going to get tons of people talking, and tons of people to view skittles.com.

Needless to say, other companies will no doubt follow the rainbow of using Twitter trending for short, hugely effective bursts of publicity. Free ad impressions (or nearly-free, you still have to pay for bandwidth) are irresistible candy.

Reactions from Twitter:

laughingsquid: along with making Twitter search the default for their website,Skittles is also using YouTube, Flickr & Facebook http://bit.ly/qGUao (expand)

SEOinSeattle: Everyone will be talking about Skittles. They know they’ll take heat and crap, but if any publicity is good they just hit a home run.

robofillet: Even if this Skittle stunt only lasts a day before they’re spammed to bits, they’ve done a great job social marketing. Skittles is trending.

averagebetty: Tweet the rainbow of carnuba wax… bad for your teeth… brilliant marketing. #skittles

emilychang: watching the tweets about skittles coming in and LMAO. the backlash has already begun. geek irony rules.

bethlexicon: @hensel says the Skittles idea is good, but the spammers are bad. Seems like you can’t have one without the other, though. #skittles

korch: finally twitter has a practical use, making this appear on skittles.com! squee!

As an aside, seems like the MARS company is trying to appeal to intarweb hipsterz…

meta-irony of the day: they’ve also gotten me to link to Skittles.com. sigh!

The Nthmost Metablog » nthmost

Words in Headlines Mean More

Twitter Trending as Publicity Stunt

Reactions from Twitter: