What's in a headline? Find out here

Goodness, it looks like 2023 was an all-time low for this blog, with one (1) post.  Not sure how that happened.  I honestly thought I'd posted at least one more.  On the other hand, I suppose it's consistent with the overall handwringing about whether there's even anything to post here.  But this post won't be that.

When I was in journalism class in high school, which was more than a few years ago to be sure, I was taught the "inverted pyramid": put the most important information, the who, what, where, when, why and how at the top of the article, then the important detail, then other background information.  The headline should concisely sum up the most important facts at the top.

Some typical headlines might be

• Pat's Diner closing after 30 years
• New ordinance bans parking on Thursdays
• Midtown high senior wins Journalism award

If you've noticed that the titles (that is, headlines) of posts here don't exactly follow that rule, that's because I'm writing opinion here, not news.  That's my story, and I'm sticking with it even as I go on to complain about other people's headlines.

One of the worst sins in old-school journalism was to "bury the lede", that is, to put the most important facts late in the story (lead as in lead paragraph is spelled lede, probably going back to the days of lead type where the usual spelling might invite confusion).  If Pat's diner is closing, you don't start with a headline of Local diner closing and a paragraph about how much people love their local diners and only later mention that it's Pat's diner that's closing.

Except, of course, that's exactly what happens a lot of the time.  Here are some examples from the articles currently on my phone:

• Windows 11 looks to be getting a key Linux tool added in the future
• Nearly 1 in 5 eligible taxpayers don't claim this 'valuable credit', IRS says
• 46-year old early retiree who had $X in passive income heads back to work -- here's why

I've tried to get out of the habit of clicking on articles like these, not because I think it will change the world (though if everybody did the same ...), but because I almost always find it irritating to click through on something to find out that they could have just put the important part in the headline:

• Linux sudo command may be added to Windows 11
• Nearly 1 in 5 eligible taxpayers don't claim earned income credit, IRS says
• Early retiree with $X in passive income back to work after house purchase and child

One of these rewrites is noticeably shorter than the original and the other two are about the same length, but they all include important information that the original leaves out: which Linux tool?; which tax credit?; why go back to work?

The lack of information in the originals isn't an oversight, of course.  The information is missing so you'll click through on the article and read the accompanying ads.  The headlines aren't pure clickbait, but they do live in a sort of twilight zone between clickbait and real headline.  If you do get to the end of the article, you'll probably see several more links worth of pure clickbait, which is an art form in itself.

Real headlines aren't dead, though.  Actual news outlets that use a subscription model tend to have traditional headlines above traditional inverted-pyramid articles.  They probably do this for the same reason that newspapers did: Subscribers appreciate being able to skim the headline and maybe the lede and then read the rest of the article if they're interested, and that sells subscriptions.

I'm pretty sure half-clickbait headlines aren't even new.  The newspaper "feature story" has been around considerably longer than the web.  Its whole purpose is to draw the reader in for longer and tempt them to browse around -- and either subscribe for the features or spend more time on the same page as ads, or both.  For that matter, I'm pretty sure a brief survey of tabloid publications in the last couple of centuries would confirm that lede-burying clickbait isn't exactly new.

I started out writing this with the idea that the ad-driven model of most web-based media has driven out old-fashioned informative journalism, and also those kids need to get off my lawn, but I think I'm now back to my not-so-disruptive technology take: Clickbait and semi-clickbait aren't new, and the inverted pyramid with an informative headline isn't dead.  In fact, when I checked, most of the articles in my feed did have informative headlines.

In part, that's probably because I've stopped clicking on semi-clickbait so much, which is probably changing the mix in my feed.  But it's probably also because the web hasn't changed things as much as we might like to think.  All three kinds of headline/article (informative, semi-clickbait, pure clickbait) are older than the web, and so are both the subscription and ad-based business models (though subscription print publications often had ads as well).  It's not too surprising that all of these would carry through.

Rumours and tweets of rumours

Someone at the Guardian (aided by academics at several universities) put in a bunch of overtime analyzing the Twitter traffic from last summer's riots in England.  In all, they traced seven rumors, five that turned out to be false, one that turned out to be true, and one they classify as "unsubstantiated."  They then put together a nice interactive graphic of the results, including a graph of the volume of traffic over time and a sort of cloud diagram color coded to show support for, opposition to, questioning of and commentary on the rumor in question, with size indicating the "influence" of the tweet, based on number of followers the originator of the tweet had.

The results are fascinating.  You should probably have a look at them yourself (here's the link again) before going on.


There is a fairly widespread notion that the web corrects itself.  People may put up misinformation, whether deliberately or in good faith, but eventually the real story will come out and supplant it.  The lead-in to the Guardian interactive graphic says so in as many words: "... Twitter is adept at correcting misinformation ..."

I don't see a lot of support for this in the data presented.

In the self-correcting model, you would expect to see an initial wave of green for a false rumor, coming with the original misinformation, steadily replaced by red, with possibly some yellow (questioning) and gray (commentary) in between.  Following is what actually happened for the five rumors determined to be definitely false.

• Rioters attack London Zoo and release animals:  Initially, green traffic grows.  After a while, red traffic comes in denying the rumor.  Hours later, there is influential red traffic, but the green traffic is still about as influential.  Traffic then dwindles, with the last bits being green, still supporting the rumor hours after it has been disputed.
• Rioters cook their own food in McDonalds: This one was picked up early by the website of the Daily Mail, which stated that there had been reports of this happening.  In any case, the green traffic surges moderately twice, before peaking at high volume several hours later.  There is no red traffic to speak of.
• London Eye set on fire:  This one actually does follow the predicted pattern.  The initial green is quickly joined by yellow and red.  The proportion of red steadily grows, and as traffic dies down it is almost entirely red.
• Rioters attack a children's hospital in Birmingham:  In this case one source of denials was someone actually working at the hospital.  Again, a strong surge of green is gradually taken over by red, but not completely.  As traffic dies down, the rumor is still being circulated as true.  Late in the game, it resurges again, though again there is a countersurge of denial.
• Army deployed in Bank [I believe this refers to the area in London near the Bank of England and the Bank tube station]:  Traffic starts out yellow, as a question over a photo (which was actually a photo of tanks in Egypt).  Red traffic begins to grow, but so does green, and yellow continues to dominate.  Eventually everything dies down.  The last bits of traffic are yellow

In summary: One of the five cases follows the "good information drives out bad" model.  One other more or less follows it.  Two are an inconclusive mix of support and denial.  One consists almost entirely of support for a false rumor.

This was in one of the world's most connected cities, with widespread access to the internet, cell phones, land lines, television, newspapers, live webcams and whatever else.  Only in the case where the rumor was trivial to refute (for example via this webcam) did Twitter appear to self-correct. 

One would be hard-pressed, I think, to distinguish between the actual true rumor (Miss Selfridge set on fire -- that's the name of a store, not a person) and the false rumor about McDonalds based solely on the volume and influence of tweets confirming and denying.  Likewise, the unsubstantiated rumor (Police 'beat 16-year-old girl') follows its own pattern, mostly surges of green, but interspersed with yellow.

This may seem like a lot of argumentation just to say "Take your tweets with a grain of salt", but pretty much everything tastes better with data.

Really? I never mentioned Snopes?

Well that obviously needs fixed.

On the off chance that you haven't heard of it, snopes.com, more formally the Urban Legends Reference Pages, is the first place to go whenever someone forwards you a forward of a forward of ... a forward of an email containing some compelling factoid or tale.

All things considered, the signal/noise ratio of the web is surprisingly high.  Some sites, like Wikipedia, improve that ratio by (in aggregate) adding useful information.  Snopes does this as well, but also helps filter out the noise.  Given that it's a two-person operation (Barbara and David Mikkelson, who met during the days of alt.folklore.urban), one could make a strong case that Snopes accounts for more signal/noise improvement per person than any other site, if "signal/noise improvement per person" weren't such a geekily silly measure I'm not sure even I can use it with a straight face.

Crucially, Snopes does not set out specifically to debunk legends, though it may seem that way since only a small minority end up confirmed as true.  Rather, it sets out simply to document the known facts, track down how the various legends and rumors have circulated and if possible where they may have started, calling police departments and local officials to actually ask if something happened, and generally doing the journalistic legwork that too often gets bypassed in pursuit of a good story.

The Mikkelsons manage to do all this in evenhanded good faith and with a well-pitched sense of humor. Think of it as MythBusters for the web, albeit without Jamie's epic mustache.


Postscript: It occurs to me that studying the proliferation of urban legends ought to be a potent vaccine against taking the notion of "the wisdom of crowds" too far.

Wikipedia, voices and objectivity

In some sort of ideal world, we get our information purely from objective sources, apply cool judgment and act accordingly. In this world the ideal news article or reference text doesn't appear to have been written by anyone. It merely transmits facts, and only facts, to the reader directly and transparently.

This is a caricature, of course, but it's fairly close to what my high school journalism teacher taught, and it's woven deeply into Wikipedia's fabric under the label of Neutral Point of View (NPOV). On the other hand, Wikipedia is almost by definition a work in progress, constantly updated by a near-anarchy of mostly psudonymous if not anonymous editors. No one can stop you from saying that hard-boiled eggs must only be cracked on the big end, and no one can stop me from correcting your heinous misconception. I mean, from expressing my personal opinion on the matter.

But it all works remarkably well, for several reasons:

• Wikipedia is inclusive by nature. An encyclopedia aims to be all-inclusive to begin with. An online encyclopedia, without the limitations of physical ink and paper, doesn't have to worry about running out of space. More important, though, is the huge number of contributors. All the paper in the world is useless without someone to write on it. And revise. And re-revise. And so on. This is not to say that Wikipedia includes everything willy-nilly. There are definite policies for what can and cannot be included, but they're aimed towards notability and not someone's idea of correctness.
• The guidelines like NPOV really do matter because they're supported by a strong culture. The community has long since reached a critical mass of active members that take Wikipedia policy seriously and act to reinforce it and to repair breaches, even if that means tediously reverting an endless stream of "MY MATH TEECHUR SUX DOOD" and worse vandalism.
• It's generally easy to tell when someone is injecting opinion. It's even easier to tell when two (or more) people are trying to inject conflicting opinions. The occasional of jumble of "Some authorities ^[who?] insist that ... however so-and-so^[17] has stated that ... " doesn't necessarily make for smooth or pleasant reading, but it does tend to make clear who's grinding which ax.
• Similarly, it's easy to spot a backwater article that hasn't seen a lot of editing. This is not necessarily a bad thing. Obscure math articles, for example, tend to read like someone's first draft of a textbook, full of "Let x ..." and "it then clearly follows that ..." The prose may be a bit chewy, but whoever wrote it almost certainly cared enough to get the details right. Articles on obscure bands generally read like liner notes and tend to slightly hype that band's achievements and their home-town music scene. That's fine. Take it with a grain of salt and enjoy the tidbits you wouldn't have heard otherwise.
• Likewise, it's easy to tell when an article has had a good going-over. Articles on "controversial" topics may or may not have had their "on the other hand ... on the other other hand ..." back-and-forth smoothed out, but they do tend to accumulate copious footnotes. Just as one could argue that forums exist to generate FAQ lists, one could argue that such articles exist to gather references to primary sources.

Whenever I find myself too far out on my "web changes nothing" limb, it helps to consider Wikipedia and realize that there's really nothing quite like it. But it's also important, I think, to realize that Wikipedia works so well not because it works perfectly -- it clearly doesn't -- but because it's robust in the face of its imperfections. This is a property of good distributed systems in general, the distributed system in this case comprising not just the author/editors, but the reader taking Wikipedia's nature into account.


P.S.: While fetching up the link for NPOV above, I first tried "npov", figuring it would redirect to the right place, WP:NPOV, since I can never remember the right prefix for the special pages. Oddly enough, if you don't capitalize it the right way, npov redirects to Journalism. Not sure I buy that, but it's an interesting angle.