Headlines versus Click Bait
head·line
ˈhedˌlīn/
noun
- a heading at the top of an article or page in a newspaper or magazine.
“a front-page headline”
click·bait
ˈklikbāt/
noun
informal
noun: click bait
- (on the Internet) content whose main purpose is to attract attention and encourage visitors to click on a link to a particular web page.
“these recent reports of the show’s imminent demise are hyperbolic clickbait”
The internet has changed the rules of engagement for headline writing
and story layout immensely; now, instead of glancing at a headline
which gives a time-saving summary of the story,
you are more likely to see click-bait:
“12 ways to lose weight! #7 flipped us out!”
or “You’ll never guess who owns this puppy!”
Back in the day, I actually learned how to lay out newspapers on these things called “flats,” which were thick coated paper (not quite cardboard) scored with light blue (invisible to print) lines and columns custom designed to fit our newspaper, Taxi News.
The printer of Taxi News was a local newspaper, the Korea Times (KT). KT provided us with the flats, which fit their press. Once each month, after laying out the entire 32 page edition of Taxi News, we would drop it off at KT and they would print 10,000 copies of it for us. One day later, we would pick up the 10,000 copies of Taxi News and drop them off at taxi companies and gas stations around the city.
Taxi News was very progressive at the time, so early in using Desk Top Publishing that it purchased the very first laser printer Apple ever sold in Canada, using a Beta version of Adobe PageMaker.
It was a unique intersection of old and new: we used the very newest technology to laser print text to paper – custom measured to the column size provided on our KT flats (a Taxi News column was 2 inches wide); but we cut each column with an Exacto knife, waxed it with a waxer, and affixed it to the KT flat in a very physical process. We did not lay out entire pages on a computer screen, as we do now. We stuck waxed pieces of text to the flat for a very specific reason: ad sales.
All newspapers run on ad sales. What was true then is just as true now. Newspapers in years past were so ready to accommodate advertising sales that they developed an entire layout system around it. We called it “Proper Paper Procedure,” or “PPP” for short.
PPP meant that we followed the layout rules established for newspapers at least a century ago: articles were written in “reverse pyramid” format, meaning that the most important paragraph, the lede, contained a concise and compelling statement of all the news to follow and the most important factual statement. We were taught that a lede could not be more than 19 words long.
Paragraph #2 elaborated on Graph #1 with additional facts which provided context.
Paragraph #3 was generally the “Nut Graph,” which contained the nub of the information being presented with more context and would likely answer the question, “Why does this article matter?”
Everything below Graph #3 was carefully written as a stand-alone paragraph which gave the reader further information, but was basically disposable. Nothing in Graphs 1, 2, or 3 could be dependent upon information in Graph #4 and onward. If the article had 8 paragraphs, #8 was the most disposable, #7 the second-most disposable, and so on.
Nothing in any paragraph could be dependent upon or refer to information in a following paragraph.
Why was this so? Ad sales! Every publication which prints ink on paper wants to maximize the number of ads within its pre-determined number of pages. Adding pages is almost never an option, so squeezing the absolute maximum number of ads into a limited number of pages becomes something of an art form.
If an ad salesman turned up with an ad at the last minute during layout and we needed to make space for it, articles got ripped off the flat to make room for the ad. Ads always take priority over articles; they pay the printer. And the staff.
So, if we needed to make room for an ad at the last minute, we began editing articles this way: the bottom paragraph went first – gone.
The second bottom paragraph went next – gone.
And so on, until we had emptied enough column inches to place the ad. Sometimes such an edit would affect only one article; more likely we’d pull off the disposable bottom paragraphs of each article on the page to keep the most important information, while preserving at least the lede, Graph #2 and the “Nut Graph” and a couple of others.
There was no editorial authority required to ask if we could trim a reverse-pyramid article from the bottom up: every hard news article was written in this style and anyone with an Exacto knife could cut from the bottom up, confident that no important information would be lost, and that no preceding information would suddenly be put out of context. For a couple of centuries, every newspaper being printed followed these rules, Proper Paper Procedure.
Taxi News was 5 columns wide at 2 inches per column; an article across the top of the page would be 5 columns wide; beneath that, probably 3 columns wide; and at the bottom nearest the fold, 1 column wide.
An article 2 columns wide and 4 inches deep – 8 column inches – could be pulled to make room for a 2 inch x 4 inch ad.
A larger ad (or maybe a breaking story) could mean that the layout team would have to re-arrange an entire page, pulling the least important articles completely and trimming – literally cutting the paper – the larger stories from the bottom up in order to free up enough column inches to place the ad.
How does PPP affect headline writing?
A headline which runs across 5 columns would be long, providing enough room to give a pretty good precis of the story below. If there was room for a 2- line headline, even more so. However, a headline 2 inches deep and 10 inches wide is 20 column inches – that’s a lot of space! That’s an ad 2 columns wide and 5 inches deep. That’s money.
As we started laying out the flats, we could be fairly generous with the headlines when there was space. If ads got sold as we were laying out – and we really would take ads right up until virtually the last minute – the first thing to go would be the long, deep headlines. With an Exacto knife, we’d cut off the second line of the headline and re-arrange the page to move the story up and make space for the ad.
This is why headlines must be written in “reverse pyramid” style the same way articles are: so they can be easily be cut without re-wording and with no editorial authority.
So, using my favourite parody headline as an example:
Boy trapped in fridge eats own foot
Police, medics too late to the scene
If we had to pull the second line, it would simply read:
Boy trapped in fridge eats own foot
If we had to move the article down the page where the headline could only be 3 columns wide, not 5, it would be laid out as:
Boy trapped in fridge
Eats own foot
If it had to be narrower still, it could be cut as:
Boy trapped
In fridge
Eats own foot
Shorter:
Boy trapped
In fridge
And shortest:
Boy trapped
In the same way that an article written in reverse pyramid cannot allow any paragraph to be dependent on a paragraph that follows it, PPP headlines are written so that no line is dependent on the line below – it has to be complete in itself and stand alone, in case it must.
By observing the rules of PPP throughout the writing and layout process, including both the article layout and the headline layout, newspapers could quickly rearrange an article, multiple articles or an entire page to make room for paid advertising or hot stories. More likely, paid advertising.
PPP rules apply to hard news stories; editorials, Op-Eds, columns, features and other human interest pieces often follow a different format, with teaser openings or telling a story in chronological order, not using reverse pyramid.
For 30 years now, newspapers have used software and other tools to quickly lay out entire editions electronically. However, even computer layouts need to follow the long-ago developed rules of PPP if print publications want to retain their ability to take last minute ads without adding pages.
The internet has changed the rules of engagement for headline writing and story layout immensely; now, instead of glancing at a headline which gives a time-saving summary of the story, you are more likely to see click-bait: “12 ways to lose weight! #7 flipped us out!” or “You’ll never guess who owns this puppy!”
Online publications, in addition to having a financial incentive to coax readers to click through endless, time-wasting pages, have virtually unlimited space in which to publish. A person who came of age reading online publications may not even realize there used to be a time when you could scan the headlines and/or the first couple of paragraphs of a whole newspaper section and get the gist of what was being reported that day. Instead, they are lost in a maze of links and lures. (“Geez!” my daughter once told me. “I went online to check something, and when I looked up, an hour had passed!” That kind of experience is the exact opposite of the logic of reverse pyramid and PPP.)
Personally, I have always appreciated the fact that somewhere, a team of writers, editors, headline writers and layout people are hard at work organizing information to save me time and effort. The Toronto Sun’s daily electronic paper is an exact replica of its paper edition, and I LOVE it! The logic, the flow, the prioritization and placement of content is all there, electronically. It’s awesome.
Long live PPP!
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