As a reminder, in both print and online publications, the content of an article is written by a journalist, but the headline is usually written by the editor. Journalists have an obligation to the readers to accurately convey context and factual information. Editors have an obligation to the owners/shareholders to sell as many newspapers or clicks as possible.
Journalists cannot write if nothing gets printed, and editors cannot publish if no articles are written. It’s a symbiotic relationship, but clickbait headlines are definitely one of the cons of that relationship. What’s unfortunate is that a lot of people just aren’t aware of this internal tension, so lots of good journalism is unread because of overzealous editors.
To be clear, typically an author must be consulted if the article’s body will be modified. But not for the headline or title or the high-level summary preceding the body.
I used to work for newspapers and magazines: This regularly drove me nuts. It’s not even necessarily the editor that writes or changes them, it can just be a random copy editor too. They fucked up my captions regularly on photos and at least half a dozen headlines too.
As a reminder, in both print and online publications, the content of an article is written by a journalist, but the headline is usually written by the editor. Journalists have an obligation to the readers to accurately convey context and factual information. Editors have an obligation to the owners/shareholders to sell as many newspapers or clicks as possible.
Journalists cannot write if nothing gets printed, and editors cannot publish if no articles are written. It’s a symbiotic relationship, but clickbait headlines are definitely one of the cons of that relationship. What’s unfortunate is that a lot of people just aren’t aware of this internal tension, so lots of good journalism is unread because of overzealous editors.
To be clear, typically an author must be consulted if the article’s body will be modified. But not for the headline or title or the high-level summary preceding the body.
I used to work for newspapers and magazines: This regularly drove me nuts. It’s not even necessarily the editor that writes or changes them, it can just be a random copy editor too. They fucked up my captions regularly on photos and at least half a dozen headlines too.