Stanford Residential & Dining Enterprises recently used AI to change the races of the students it included in its advertisements. AI was also used to noticeably slim down and alter students’ faces.
On his journey to campus, Stanford student Billy Ramirez ’27 was sent an image he recalled a Stanford photographer taking. Upon closer examination, he noticed that he had been removed from the photo and replaced by a AI-generated black woman.
On top of the swap out of Ramirez, the AI apparently decided the Asian lady could stand to lose a few pounds and that the white kid needed a better haircut.
And we wonder where young people get their issues…
MADISON, Wis., Sept. 24 (AP) — The University of Wisconsin at Madison has acknowledged altering a publicity photograph to add a black face to a crowd of white football fans, a step the college says it took to present an image of diversity.
The university said last week that it had digitally altered the cover of its fall admissions brochure to include a black senior, Diallo Shabazz, who says he has never even attended a football game at the university. The mistake was brought to light after a sharp-eyed staff member at the student newspaper, The Daily Cardinal, noticed that Mr. Shabazz’s face seemed to be lighted differently from the other students’.
(“You think anyone will notice we stuck a random black guy’s head in there?” “Nah… Print that thing!”)
DISCUSSION STARTER: What is your general feeling about using AI to alter reality, especially in a way like Stanford did? You could easily argue that people were being lazy, in that I’m sure they could have found a photo that represented the diversity mix the folks there wanted. You could also argue that this is deceptive, which calls into question every OTHER thing the folks present as fact. There are also a ton of other ways you can look at this, so have at it.
Student media and university officials tend to have relationships that range from somewhat cordial to downright vitriolic. This makes sense in a relatively adversarial system, in which the goal of the university is to present itself in the most positive light possible, while the goal of the student journalists is to present reality, regardless of how it makes the university look.
In the case of The Alestle at Southern Illinois University-Edwardsville, the relationship has devolved to the point in which a member of the school’s PR team filed a police report against the paper’s editor, claiming harassment via one line in an email. This is on top of a PR official saying her unfettered ability to sit in on interviews between student reporters and university personnel is “non-negotiable.” And those are just the most recent clashes over what is and isn’t acceptable under the First Amendment.
If you are behind on the story, there has been a TON of good reporting that can catch you up here:
The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) has been involved in this for a while as well, and some key information, including a letter sent to the administration, can be found here.
The headlines of the story capture both the oddity and impact of this story: A clash over the First Amendment rights of student journalists ends up with an administrator essentially calling the cops on the editor, claiming harassment. What is getting overlooked however, reveals a bigger set of problems for the students, the university and even press freedom in general.
I exchanged a series of emails with The Aleste’s editor-in-chief, Dylan Hembrough and also conducted a phone interview with him, exchanged a series of emails with SIUE Director of Communications Nicole Franklin and did some deep dives into the background of this beef.
Rather than rehash what a lot of superior journalists have already reported, here are a few important things that are getting lost in the coverage of this story:
THIS ISN’T A ONE-TIME PROBLEM: A number of articles look at this moment as a singular incident, but it’s not. Although neither party could put a specific date on the start of the conflict, Hembrough, pointed to a story he wrote, regarding the university’s policy that resident assistants (RAs) were not allowed to talk to student media.
As the story made the rounds, the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) caught wind of it and eventually wrote a letter to SIUE, explaining how the university couldn’t clamp down on students’ free speech rights if they were to speak as individuals, not university representatives. In response, the university noted The Aleste’s story was inaccurate, but did not elaborate on why it was wrong or what clarifications they had provided to student workers about media interactions.
Hembrough has been EIC for the past three years and said that he’s outlasted three head spokespeople, each of whom has been less than thrilled/cooperative when it comes to The Alestle, so clearly this isn’t a one-time problem.
(To be fair to SIUE, UW-Madison is ranked 61 and still has a grade of D, even though it’s a bastion of liberalism that has the reputation of “Two’s company, three’s a protest.” Probably the more telling thing is SIUE’s ranking of 243 out of 261 colleges and universities. Private institutions like Notre Dame and Marquette University rank better and they’re technically ALLOWED to do more suppression than SIUE if they felt like it.)
In addition, the school settled a free-speech lawsuit in 2023 with former student Maggie DeJong, who argued the university violated her First Amendment rights. According to the suit, DeJong wore a “Back the Blue” hat to class as a way to show her support of police and counter speech related to “defunding the police.”
In 2018, College Republicans sued the school over a free-speech policy that literally restricted free speech to 0.0013% of the total campus footprint. Even worse, the policy regarding that tiny “Speech Zone” required that the university approve the “free speech” offered in that space at least two days in advance if the planned speech was expected to be fluffy and happy speech. If the speech could be more “controversial,” students needed to get the permission 90 days in advance.
Long story short, it’s not just a liberal thing or a student media thing. SIUE just seems like a place that treats free speech like it’s a cockroach problem that won’t go away.
WHO GETS TO CALL THEMSELVES JOURNALISTS?: The two key media reps for SIUE during this situation, Franklin and Executive Director Paula Bridges, have leaned heavily on their status as former journalists with decades of journalism experience while condemning The Alestle.
(EDITOR’S NOTE: Bridges has left her position at SIUE as of Sept. 16, according to an article on The Alestle website. Links to her staff pages at SIUE are now dead and she has not updated her LinkedIn profile with new career information as of this writing.)
So as I navigated a career that straddled 30 years in television news and more than 25 as an indie filmmaker some would agree my work exemplifies a Black woman’s joy. I’ll take it. My desire to pursue communications in college in reference to broadcast media was what I saw as the only degree that made sense at the time.”
<SNIP>
“That’s an interesting question because I came to this role after working 30 years in news television as a video editor/engineer and more than 25 years as an independent filmmaker.
Bridges also calls herself a journalist on her LinkedIn page, noting experience in both print and broadcast. In the letter she wrote slamming The Alestle, she doubled down on that statement:
As a journalist with more than 30 years of experience with newspapers, news radio, magazines, and broadcast television, I will always defend First Amendment rights and freedom of the press. I also recognize the important obligation that accompanies the power to publish: verify facts before publication and correct errors when they occur.
I concluded my reporting career as an Emmy Award-winning news anchor, and served across various sectors including municipal government, public safety, the judiciary, and education. I am writing an open letter to our university community because I am deeply troubled by the direction and disposition of The Alestle as an exercise of journalism.
In digging into both of their backgrounds, it’s unclear to me how the math works and also how those experiences directly relate to any First Amendment support.
For Franklin, she lists the following items:
The big one, where she spent 17 years was a bit confusing, but in digging into her resume, it was a little clearer:
This was mostly production work, as opposed to news gathering or journalistic content creation. In addition the other two places where she worked that are categorized as “news” are basically morning programs where little in the way of hard-hitting news occurs. And again, I’d imagine she wasn’t responsible for the news reporting as a video editor.
In terms of Bridges, the experience brag is nowhere nearly commensurate with the resume she publicly shares. That “30 years” she opens her letter with really comes down to about eight or nine years of broadcast journalism at the anchor desk:
That’s actual experience in journalism, no doubt, even if it ended before a lot of The Alestle staffers were in grade school. Outside of that, however, her professional life has been on the PR side of the fence for numerous public institutions:
Add all that up and you more than double her time in journalism, not to mention it’s the most recent 17 years of her career, give or take. That’s not to criticize those jobs, as I teach students every day who want to take gigs like that, but I’d argue that those careers are more about reputation management and positive front-facing work as opposed to what news reporters do.
Also, given those positions, I’d wager a dollar to a doughnut that Hembrough and his crew have done more investigative, deep-dive, digging-around, according-to-Hoyle journalism stuff in the past three years than these two folks have done at any of their stops.
BELIEVE WHOMEVER YOU WANT, BUT CHECK THE RECEIPTS FIRST: In most cases like this, one side puts out a list of issues it has about free speech or conflict and the other side goes silent. If you look back at the multi-part series we did here in Indiana University’s fight with the Indiana Daily Student, I tried to get comments from at least five people in administration and the only response I got was a set of links to previous statements that didn’t answer my questions.
In this situation, both Hembrough and Franklin have been active in presenting their cases to the media. As is the case with most mainstream media stories, space is limited and reporters want to play fair, so they grab a quote from each and move on.
In the case of Hembrough, the quotes mostly discuss the way in which the admin has been dumping all over the paper in public without having the facts right. In the case of Franklin, the quotes mostly present a case of the students making mistakes and not correcting them, all while arguing she’s totally in favor of free speech.
For example, Franklin made what appears to be a completely reasonable statement in an email to me:
This has never been about free speech or freedom of the press. SIUE has a long history of sponsoring The Alestle and training student journalists, and that commitment has not wavered.
The real issue is the lack of journalistic principles of objectivity, truthfulness, and accuracy. Calling for accuracy is not interference. The Alestle has repeatedly published information that is inaccurate and, despite requests for corrections, has been slow or unwilling to make them.
That comment sounds fair, in that being accurate and following journalistic principles should be at the core of what student media does. When I asked Hembrough about those allegations, he did more than comment.
In this timeline of links, rebuttals and clarifications, he names names, documents dates and shows his work. In picking through this over the last week, I could easily see how some of the comments Franklin had made in various comments were either inaccurate or in service of the university’s narrative.
He also had emails to support his statements that Franklin had been presented with information about her presence at interviews being a First Amendment violation, as well as her reactions, such as her statement that her presence was “non-negotiable.”
And as Hembrough said, “Thereareonlysomanywaysyoucanslicethewordnon-negotiable.”
When it comes down to it, journalists are supposed to be objective, but we’re also supposed to be fans of reality. In other words, if one person says it’s raining and one person says it’s sunny, we aren’t supposed to just report both equally.
We’re supposed to look out the window and figure out who’s right, which is why checking those receipts is really important.
IT’S HARD TO SQUARE THE CIRCLE ON SIUE’S FIRST AMENDMENT TALK: What keeps coming up most in these discussions is the First Amendment and how it either is or isn’t being violated in this situation. In an email Franklin sent me, she noted:
Our position is straightforward: the University has a legitimate interest in ensuring that information it provides to the public is objective, truthful, accurate, and that factual errors concerning the University are identified and, where appropriate, corrected. That interest does not conflict with our commitment to free speech and free press.
Based on what I’ve seen of the coverage on this, the timeline Hembrough provided and my digging into the background on SIUE, the reporting is meeting those goals, with errors generally being corrected in what is a reasonable time period.
I’m uncertain as to how the university is parsing “truthful” versus “accurate” and it’s also interesting that the lack of objectivity seems to be focused on stories that don’t paint the university in the best light.
Setting those issues aside, experts in media law at multiple organizations have stated their concerns regarding the way in which the actions of SIUE’s PR folks are problematic in relation to the First Amendment rights of The Alestle staff. The response from the system’s lawyer doesn’t directly address the concerns.
If you’re really committed to the First Amendment, it means you have to support press freedom that is unfettered by governmental overreach, both direct and indirect. When experts in that field are telling you, point blank, you are in violation of the letter and spirit of that law, it might be time to reconsider your actions.
If sources are really concerned about accuracy, have them record the interview instead of having Franklin sit in. It’s a fair trade, in that both sides have a complete record of what happened and no governmental agent is there to potentially chill the exchange of information.
(SIDE NOTE: I emailed a couple people who have covered this story and a couple journalists who cover SIUE on the regular to ask one basic question: Does Franklin make a point of sitting in on your interviews as well? I’m trying to figure out if this is an Alestle-only thing or not. If anyone responds, I’ll add it here.)
Speaking of chilling, filing a police report against a student journalist feels an awful lot like a brush-back pitch. In our interview, Hembrough told me he got the email during class and his anxiety immediately kicked into overdrive:
Actions like these don’t tend to send a message that someone is totally in favor of free speech. If you’re really and fully committed to the freedom of the press, you need to let it ride at all times, not just when you’re happy with what the press is doing.
SIUE IS BULLYING ITS OWN STUDENTS: In my interview with Hembrough, he was talking about the juxtaposition of the allegations that he harassed Franklin and the way in which the school has been treating The Alestle:
When we read stories about university administrators attacking student media, it’s often hard to remember that the student journalists actually CHOSE to be at the institutions that are attacking them. In many legal ways, they are like any other journalists who are gathering information and telling stories. However, they are also tuition-paying members of the larger university community.
Every university marketing campaign I’ve ever seen is filled with platitudes about how the school will be this fantastic place for its students, complete with career prep, academic inquiry and personal growth.
I’ve yet to see an asterisk on any of that marketing material that says, “Unless you are a student journalist who ticks us off, at which point, buckle your chinstrap.”
On Thursday, the digital media company lost its three-year partnership with Callaway Golf, while the PGA Tour said Good Good would no longer sponsor one of the association’s tournaments in November. The ad, co-branded with Callaway, shows a male golfer shoving a female golfer to the ground as she reaches for his driver.
The beleaguered CEO of Good Good just publicly blasted Callaway after the golf company ended its partnership with the YouTuber group over a controversial ad.
“Interesting that @CallawayGolf asks us to make an ad then approves it then asks us to take the fall then drops us in a coordinated media blitz and covers it up by giving a million dollars away thinking everyone will be ok with it,” Matt Kendrick wrote in a post on X.
Believe it or not, Kendrick “exited” the company shortly after the post and the rage against the ad failed to abate.
Speaking of soft language that didn’t tell us what really happened, Callaway’s apology from CEO Chip Brewer used some great passive-voice construction to stack sandbags regarding who was or wasn’t involved in OKing the ad:
“That approval should never have happened,” Brewer wrote. “Mistakes were made, and we are taking the matter very seriously.”
FROM THE “IS WE LEARNING YET?” DEPARTMENT: I have no idea what it takes to make a successful, well-received ad, but I do know that misogyny tends not to be a key component. All you have to do is look back at dozens of ads that failed for this specific reason. The one I tend to show in my ad class was this one from Dodge, which really went all out to make married life look appealing:
God (and your husband) will be watching: The failed Peloton Christmas ad campaign
Unless you have been living in a cave, you probably know that Peloton has landed on the “most-hated” list for gifts this Christmas, thanks in large part to the ad shown above.
Peloton is so far sticking by its widely mocked holiday ad. The spot, called “The Gift that Gives Back,” continued to air Tuesday evening on networks including ESPN, Lifetime, Bravo and HGTV, according to ad-tracking service iSpot, even as criticism grew.
The ad, about a woman whose husband gifts her an apparent life-changing exercise bike, sparked a gender backlash that clearly clashed with any seasonal cheer the brand was expecting.
“It’s a complete male fantasy ad,” says Kit Yarrow, a consumer psychologist, noting that the spot could inspire men to be “gifting heroes” and get “skinnier spouses.”
A Peloton costs between $2,250 and $2,700, depending on which package you buy. That’s pretty pricey for something destined to become a high-tech clothing rack. It’s probably even more expensive when you factor in the therapy you’ll need when the instructor starts screaming at you to work harder.
A good friend who is a feminist scholar nailed the Peloton ad in a way I couldn’t:
She is already fit and she documents every minute for him as if he is watching her every move. Look at her face. At the end she says her life is so much better but there is no evidence given why her life is better, except that she gets up before dawn when she doesn’t want to so she can ride some bike for him. No one should do such things only because another person wants them to.
After I read that post, I went back and rewatched the ad. I noticed things like the look on the wife’s face on day one: It’s a mix of fear and “I hope to please you.” The fact she records every day for the purpose of eventually showing him the video at the end is freakish. The fact that she seems to be biking at all hours seems obsessive.
The daughter seeing her already-thin mom biking like a maniac provides a strange modeling behavior. Also, what the hell was the guy doing all this time? Is he in a room full of TVs watching her like Billy Baldwin in “Sliver?” At the local bar getting fat on beer and pork rinds, because, hey, it’s not like he has to worry about his waistline.
Holiday ads for high priced items tend to really lead to awkward advertisements. The Kay Jewelers “Woman who is scared of lightning and needs man to protect her” ad stereotypes women in multiple ways. Also their slogan of “Every Kiss begins with Kay” seems to imply, “Wanna get laid? Buy her some jewelry!”
Pick any Lexus ad that involves a big red bow and you essentially can see even more awkwardness. If you want to step past the fact it’s pretty much always some rich handsome dude buying some trophy wife woman an overpriced Toyota with better hubcaps, you can still see some real creepy in this ad:
Not sure what they were going for here. “Lexus: Bring out the little girl in your wife.” Eeew.
If the maxim, “There’s no such thing as bad publicity” is true, Peloton is getting a heck of a lot of value out of body-shaming a stick-thin woman. People are debating the ad online and morning shows are running it on a constant loop to give it an official “tsk tsk.”
However, the truth probably is that the company did more harm than good to its brand. The stock price, which got a quick uptick after the ad went viral, has since gone back down, in a slide some are calling a “nightmare.” Also, any guy who picked up a Peloton in November thinking, “She was asking about this thing. I’m a great guy for getting it.” is now swearing up and down to Citibank that this was a fraudulent charge.
Maybe the only person who came out of this with any benefit was Monica Ruiz, the wife in the commercial, who scored another gig based on her role:
When you absolutely, positively need to break an important story…
I spent part of the summer critiquing student news media outlets and judging student media contests, something that often helps me see what is going on in the universe of universities. Some things never change (parking problems, dorm food debacles, roommate dysfunction) while other things definitely show me the nuance and distinctiveness among various schools.
A category that kept showing up on my plate was “breaking news,” mainly because that category tended to have a lot of entries, thus other volunteers avoided it like the plague, and I spent my formative journalism years running after anything that caught fire, got shot or otherwise went to hell in a speedboat.
As strange as it seemed to me, there wasn’t a lot of consistency in terms of what qualified as “breaking news” or what made a breaking-news story worthy of submission. Everything from county fairs to shootings ended up here, with lengths ranging from “undersized haiku” to “plus-sized Iliad.” Sufficient to say, all of this made it difficult to pick winners, particularly when trying to compare them.
With all that in mind, here are some things that came to mind as I was reading through some of the offerings:
AN EVENT ISN’T (NORMALLY) BREAKING NEWS: The concept behind “breaking” news really started with radio broadcasting in the 1930s. It was predicated on the idea was that something so important and unexpected had happened, it merited breaking into whatever was currently on air to alert the public about that important thing. With that in mind, if you’re going to call something breaking, you need to showcase two things:
How something is exceptionally important, exceeding the importance of the regular stuff you were covering.
How it was unexpected, either in terms of no one foreseeing it happening or something that was expected to happen a certain way going off the rails.
In most cases, this means event stories don’t really meet those primary requirements. For example, a group of people planning an annual “walk a mile in her shoes” march to support sexual-assault awareness isn’t a breaking news piece unless something unexpected happens. If it goes off the way it should, it’s an event and that’s about it.
That’s not to say anything that doesn’t involve a shooting or a fire can’t be a breaking news story. An unplanned walkout of school students to protest how the district is banning books could be a breaking news event, as could a planned walkout that started peacefully enough before the kids started throwing flaming books at cars in the faculty parking lot.
If everyone knows this is happening for weeks in advance, so much so the administration sanctions it and the PTA brings bottled water and snacks, you’re not “breaking” much of anything.
GRAB ME QUICK, HOLD ME TIGHT: In a lot of contest entries I reviewed, I felt that a lot of people were abiding by the “longer is better” philosophy when it came to what made the cut. I get that this makes a lot of sense in feature categories, profile categories and in-depth/investigative categories, as deeper pieces with more nuance and description need the room to breathe. (To be fair, even some of those could use a little pruning.)
What really made the difference with the breaking stories, however, was how quickly the lead grabbed me and how tightly written the rest of the piece was. I knew something had made the first cut and probably the final pile if I read a lead and instinctively blurted out, “Oh my God!”
When I found myself scrolling to the end of the story and not skipping a word before I hit the requisite ads for “5 tricks to relieve back pain your doctor won’t tell you” and “You’ll never guess what your favorite teen idol got busted for now!” I knew it was a tight, strong read.
If you’re truly “breaking” the news, you need to tell people right away what happened and why they care. If you want to think about it in relation to the old broadcast standard, you’re essentially saying, “Here is something so important, we need to stop what you like enough to be currently watching/hearing and point you to this new thing.” To that end, when you aren’t producing content like that, you need to return people to their previously scheduled programming.
(SIDE NOTE: The one real thing we tend to “break into” programming for these days is weather, which makes a lot of sense, as an impending tornado or damaging storm is something people NEED to know about NOW, so they can go to safety. However, the local weather folks seem like they start channeling Norma Desmond from “Sunset Boulevard” the minute they get on the air.
It takes everything I have not to start laughing when they cut into a Brewers game and spend the next 30 minutes repeating 30 seconds worth of information, only stopping to say, “We KNOW we’re interrupting the Brewers game, but you need to listen to us NOW!” Meanwhile, my dad is practically chewing on the remote control as these weather barons are waiting for Mr. DeMille to give them a close up.)
Breaking news doesn’t have to be long, but it does have to pound the heck out of the content in a non-stop fashion. Even if in an early unfolding report you have to add information based on observation or other “filler” elements, once you get to a true breaking situation, trim out any random garbage that doesn’t keep a grip on the readers’ eyeballs and you’ll have a winner.
TELL ME WHAT YOU KNOW AND WHAT YOU DON’T: The best stories answer all the questions readers have in a clear and complete fashion. The next time that happens in a breaking news event will be the first time it ever happened.
That’s not a dig on reporters or media outlets, as it’s the nature of the beast: When something unexpected happens, everyone is trying to figure things out at the same time, so there will naturally be a dearth of information and a ton of holes in stories.
The best breaking news tells the audience everything the reporter knows about the situation, but it also tells the audience what they DON’T know as well. That can feel counterintuitive sometimes, because it’s like answering questions on a final exam with, “You got me! Good one! I have no idea.”
However, I know that when I was reading stories, I had questions that kept popping up in my head. Maybe it was the journalist in me, but sometimes I was thinking, “Did they try to call (SOURCE X)?” or “Was (DOCUMENT Y) available?” Other times, I saw holes in stories like, “Did the police catch the robber?” or “When can people move back in now that the flooding is receding?”
I’m sure a few folks forgot to ask those questions or gather those facts, but I bet even more of the journalists asked about the stuff I had wondered about, but nobody had an answer, or a source refused to comment.
Putting in those bits of information can help the readers see what you did to provide them with the most complete story. That not only helps fill some holes they see, but it also gives them more confidence in the rest of the story, as it becomes clear that you did the job as well as the job could be done.
About 15 years ago, I was riding in a taxi at 4:30 in the morning with a driver who was yammering a million miles per minute in a dialect best described as “Swamp People on Uppers.”
He was telling me about the heat index and how I was lucky to be leaving Columbia, Missouri before sun up. He was telling me about his home somewhere in Louisiana, which he left because of some reason he couldn’t adequately explain in our short drive.
He was talking about a story he heard on the radio about a woman in Philadelphia being hit in the face by a five-pound fish, a situation he said likely occurred when an eagle dropped its lake-drawn quarry into a nearby tree.
Suddenly he stopped, and in clear, crisp English said, “Hey, you wanna buy a watch?”
Then, he was off to the races again, explaining that a drunk flagged him down around 3 a.m. and asked for a ride home and how he wasn’t going to give the guy a ride, but the guy promised him a big tip and then they got to his house and you know what? “That sumbitch didn’t have no money on him.”
So… The guy hands over a watch to hold until he could go into his house and get money, but then he disappeared into the house and wouldn’t answer the door no matter how loudly the driver knocked…
Each time the driver pitched me the watch, the value went up: It started as a $100, based on what the guy saw online. Then it was a, swear to God, $150 watch. By the time we got to our highway off ramp, it was a $250 timepiece, but the hell did he need a watch for? He didn’t ever wear a watch and besides, he had his wife to tell him how damned late he was… All he needed was to sell it so he could cover his fare and not get in trouble with the bosses…
And on and on and on it went.
When we got to the airport, I had stifled the laughter as long as I could, but I still had to ask, “OK, so how much was the fare?”
“It was 25 goddaddanged dollars!” he told me. “And I mean this watch… You know how much this thing is worth?”
At that point, I forked over my fare, a tip and an additional $25 for the watch. It wasn’t so much that I was buying the watch, but instead, I bought the story. And the story attached to that object was worth so much more than the object itself.
When it comes to writing, you can find a lot of value in understanding stories and how objects can lead to those things. Objects themselves are pretty much static and plain, but the things they evoke in us can make for some fascinating stories. Good reporters can ask questions about those items to tap into something beneath the surface of a source. Good writers can then use those revelations to better paint word pictures for the audience.
For example, when I’m doing a profile, I look to see if there’s something very clearly important to a person in their office, their home, their car or more. Sometimes, it’s simple like hand-drawn crayon-colored pictures taped to a wall, showcasing that they’re a “mommy” or “daddy” first and a powerful CEO second.
(I once mentioned in a lecture that occasionally I’ll spot a piece of jewelry on someone that seems to feel particularly important. Almost instinctively, a young lady in the room reached up and touched a pendant hanging on her necklace. It turned out, that was the last gift her grandmother had given her, and it serves as a sentimental reminder of a relative.)
I have found that you can learn a lot about people based on certain objects and asking about those items. I figured this out when I first started doing furniture restoration and friends would put me in touch with people torn between selling and refinishing a piece.
I’d ask a simple question, “Tell me about your (chair/table/hutch/whatever).”
If they started to tell me that it was maple or walnut, or that it was such-and-such brand from such-and-such era, I’d likely offer to buy the piece. I’d then refinish it and either keep it or sell it.
If they started with, “Oh, this was my grandma’s chair,” or “This was mom and dad’s kitchen table, and we always had our holiday dinners on it,” I’d convince them to get it restored, do it for whatever they could afford and return it to them in the best shape possible.
In one case, I’d donated a “gift certificate” for refinishing to a fundraiser for a local boy who was experiencing some significant health challenges. I promised that the winner of the silent auction could have any piece done that they wanted (as long as it wasn’t a piano or something I couldn’t move).
The family that won it asked to have their oak kitchen table redone, and it had really seen better days. The finish was all worn off, it had glass rings permeating the wood and the thing had an ungodly wobble to it. As I was loading it into the car, the mom of the family said her daughter had a request. The daughter was in her early 20s and she seemed embarrassed that her mom was making a fuss, but I asked what she wanted.
“Do you see these cigarette burns?” she asked, pointing to several spots on the well-worn table top. “Can you save them? Her grandfather used to smoke at the table and she said she’d be sad if they were all gone.”
So, that’s exactly what I did, leaving those little “character” remarks behind because the sentimental reminder was worth more than perfection to these people.
As a reporter, look to the objects that are interesting or distinctive in some meaningful way and see what a source can tell you about it. In some cases, a vase is just a vase or a ring is just a ring, but it never hurts to ask. In many cases, you will open the door to something well beyond what you could have imagined.
ONE FINAL NOTE: Sometimes objects can help explain something about the subject of a piece or typify an aspect of a personality that otherwise would be inexplicable.
For me, the best example is this ashtray:
I picked this up at an estate sale a few years back, and it’s nothing special. I think I paid five bucks for it and it’s advertising a relatively obscure beer company overseas.
However, the process of getting it and keeping it reveals a lot about me. (At least that’s what Amy said, and she didn’t really say it in a good way…)
I was wandering around the sale when I spotted this on the ground and nobody else was near it or me. When I picked it up, a woman who runs an antique store and was hoarding things in a pile 30 feet away screams, “THAT’S MINE! I WAS GETTING THAT!”
I looked at the guy who was running the place and he kind of just shrugged, so as I went to buy it, she was making all sorts of passive aggressive comments about how I “stole” from her and how I should know how “unethical” I was being. As I was leaving, she asked the guy about furniture restoration and buying restored pieces, and he mentioned I had done some and was good, so she asked for my number.
Peace with honor, I thought, so when she texted me asking about furniture I’d done, I sent pictures and offered to sell her some things. To which she responded, “I might consider that if you give me back my ashtray.”
So, before I deleted her number and blocked her, I calmly texted back that if I were ever to be so broke that I starved to death and was forced to be buried in a debtor’s field, I would be buried with that frickin’ ashtray before I ever gave it to her for any reason.
During the first media-writing class I teach each semester, I tell the students, “The first thing you will write for a grade in this class will be one sentence long and it’ll take you three class periods to do it.”
The students usually give me either an incredulous or smirking look that says, “Dude… Do you THINK you’re teaching the slow class? There’s no way it’ll take that long.”
And then it does, with some of them even thinking about reconsidering their major.
The problem I’ve found over the years is that students are trained to write to page counts that forced them to fluff up their work to meet the required length. Whether it’s two pages or 10 pages, they need to add stuff to get there.
Our field requires precision, clarity and focus. Get to the point and get done.
To that end, we’re doing a lead-writing throwback Thursday post to help showcase the ways in which leads go wrong and how best to fix them. Enjoy!
Just tell me what happened: Lead writing 101
The lead is the most important thing you will ever write in a story. It’s supposed to grab your readers by the eyeballs and drag them into the guts of your story. It’s supposed to explain who did what to whom in a clear and concise fashion. It’s also supposed to be between 25 and 35 words, lest it get wild and unruly. This is one of those skills you need to work on constantly, even if you are a pro.
Consider a few of the following leads and what went horribly wrong with them:
Lead 1: It’s the most sensational, inspirational, celebrational, muppetational…
Hyperbole is the art of creating overblown excitement for no real reason. A straw man approach is the ability to set up a weak argument or premise that no one has stated so you can refute it and establish your point of view. If you put both of them in a lead, you have something like this story’s opening:
Delivering wheelchairs to disabled kids across the country from Bozeman may sound like a pipe dream, but it’s exactly what ROC Wheels does.
I don’t know much about Bozeman, Montana, but I’m guessing its entire populous doesn’t stay awake at night aspiring to deliver wheelchairs to people. Also, who says this aspiration would likely go unmet if my supposition in the previous sentence were incorrect? What is this “On Bozeman, Montana’s Waterfront?”
The author has overstated her point, and that’s just one problem with this lead. Here are two others:
The story isn’t about ROC’s past. It’s about the launch of a new program involving veterans building and delivering chairs as part of a therapeutic activity. Thus, the lead is buried in the second sentence.
The origin of the term “pipe dream” relates to the smoking of an opium pipe and the wild visions this activity evoked in people. Eeesh.
This is a clear case of what happens when a writer tries to do too much with a lead. Just tell me what’s going on and why I care: Veterans will build and deliver wheelchairs, an activity that helps the recipients as well as the veterans.
Lead 2: How can we bore people with a story about sex?
Question: How can a lead about sex toys be bad?
Answer: Like this.
Zach Smith had sex toys delivered to him at Ohio State‘s football headquarters in 2015, according to an online report Friday, raising more questions about the former assistant coach’s conduct while employed there just as the university prepares to conclude its investigation of the program and head coach Urban Meyer.
This 50-word monstrosity manages to pour a ton of random facts into the mind of the reader, like that scene in “A Clockwork Orange.” Even more, the lead skipped several other elements of the report that were far more likely to grab the readers’ attention:
He spent more than $2,200 on this stuff, including on items named “WildmanT ball lifter red, candyman men’s jock suspenders (and) PetitQ open slit bikini brief,” none of which are the most offensive items he purchased. Plus, that’s almost twice what I spent on my first car…
His lawyer threatened the reporter over the publication of these documents and refused to engage in the premise that this was a legitimate story.
Smith apparently had a “photography hobby” of sorts, namely that he took shots of his genitalia while at work, including multiple photos believed to have been taken at the White House during a celebration of the team’s national championship.
I’m not saying you should always go with salacious details in a lead. The point is that if you pick a key element of a situation like this for the lead, don’t lose the thread as you try to weave in six other plot lines. This is a sports story, not a “Grey’s Anatomy” episode.
ENID, Okla. — Garfield County Sheriff’s Office and PreventionWorkz partnered earlier this month to conduct alcohol-compliance checks throughout the county.
This is a version of the standard “held a meeting” or “gave a speech” lead. It often shows up in sports reporting as well where someone will explain that Team X played Team Y on Friday or something. The problem with every version of this lead is that it fails to tell the readers the outcome of something. Instead, it simple explains that something happened. In this case, the writer could have focused on a number of things:
In the 25 random checks, four places sold alcohol to the underage person, down from eight sales in March.
In all of the cases, the clerks checked the person’s ID, but the four sales came from reading the ID wrong.
Of the four sales, one person had sold to a minor and been cited at least once before.
There’s also some information about upcoming legal changes that will require sellers to take a course in IDing people and such. Finally, the story noted that the authorities look to hit 100 percent compliance, but it never mentions if that ever happens. In any case, telling me an alcohol check happened isn’t telling me much of anything as a reader.
Lead 4: Here’s your lead. Guess the story:
Quote leads are always difficult for readers, because they lack context. Try this one:
“There is not a man under the canopy of heaven, that does not know that slavery is wrong for him.”
It’s a great line from a great man: Frederick Douglass uttered it in his 1852 speech, “What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?” However, dropping it up at the front of a story doesn’t make it a lead.
Whether the quote comes from a source in the story, a movie, a poem, a song lyric or a famous person, as is the case here, the reader will likely be unable to determine the point of the piece. Quote leads are always dicey for exactly this reason: It feels like you were dropped into the middle of someone else’s conversation at a party.
A journalist has accused Cleveland.com — the online home of The Plain Dealer, Ohio’s largest newspaper — of publishing an article under her byline without her consent, knowledge, or approval. The article was generated by the “Cleveland.com Express Desk,” which “uses AI tools to assist in producing content” that the newspaper claims is “reviewed and edited by staff.”
The supposed writer, Kaitlin Durbin, was not thrilled about having her employer slap her byline on whatever the hell Cleveland.com’s robot overlords had decided to create:
(SIDE NOTE, PART I: This story could have used some actual reporting, as this literally reads like a press release that was copied and pasted into the paper. Also, anytime someone says they are quitting a job for “personal reasons,” I tend to believe that there’s something less benign happening that is just SCREAMING for someone to dig into it. )
Well, at least when our kids turn in their papers, they actually have their own names on them…
(SIDE NOTE PART II: The clip I desperately want to use here to express my feelings about this whole situation comes from the opening of “Another 48 Hours,” when Nick Nolte is questioned by internal affairs after he shoots a guy and accidentally blows up a race track. The people at Sage would have a full on aneurysm if I posted it, so instead, I’m linking to this clip, while also telling you that it’s number nine on the top 10 quotes. Watch at your discretion.)
IT’S “ONE TO GROW ON” TIME: As much as I doubt Chris Quinn will read this, I still think it’s worth the rest of us to dig in and learn something from this situation. Here are the best “One To Grow On” moments I can pull out of this:
You can’t let automation make you lazy: One of the biggest risks of automation is that the humans supposedly overseeing it tend to pay less attention to the details. When we had to look up every word instead of relying on spellcheck, we tended to edit more carefully and thus avoid headlines that proclaimed the opening of a “pubic library” or one like this:
Generative AI moves that risk even higher, because a) it’s capable of doing more complex stuff for us than traditional AI, b) We’re not as familiar with its risks and c) We don’t know how best to backstop it yet.
This means we need to be MORE diligent with this stuff, not less.
What is the true Cost vs. Value of AI?:In his magnum opus, singing the praises of AI, Quinn explained how reporters will benefit from all the time AI could save them, so they could do other more important things. (Apparently, in this case, it saved the reporter enough time to go on a honeymoon without actually having to file the story she supposedly wrote…)
He also opined on how the readers will benefit from better overall coverage and how the world will benefit because people are now part of an “energized electorate” that will engage like never before.
The idea of saving time, energy and resources sounds great in terms of value, but what about the cost associated with ticking off a reporter who is publicly wondering aloud if the paper thinks it owns her soul?
Some portion of your newsroom probably thinks you’re already selling them out for a sack of magic beans and the promise of fourth-quarter profits for the hedge funds that own the place. Now, I imagine they’re less likely to believe that “AI is your friend” and more likely to think “The T-800 is coming for your job and your soul…”
Also, what about the cost associated with the loss of readership confidence in ALL of your work now? Before, it might have been, “OK, don’t trust anything with that AI Buzzword byline on it, but we know Kaitlyn and she’s solid.” Now it’s “OK, did the person we thought wrote the story actually write the story, or was it even a person at all?”
Trust and credibility have always been built a grain at a time when it comes to the media’s relationship with the public, and it’s always been destroyed in an instant when someone makes a short-sighted decision to cut corners.
AI can do a lot, but it can’t change that.
You’re a journalist, not a cult leader: One of the biggest problems here was Quinn’s “nothing to see here” response when the byline situation broke:
After this story was published, Quinn told Futurism that the byline blunder was “a simple mistake, the result of a miscommunication between a couple of editors.”
“It was corrected as soon as we learned of it from the Tweet,” Quinn continued, adding that he’s “written extensively about our policies, practices and controls regarding AI content in my From the Editor columns this year” and directing us to a post containing links to his statements on Cleveland.com’s AI policies. “If you’re looking for information about us, it’s all there,” said Quinn. “I have nothing to add.”
Back when he first was telling everyone who would listen that AI was not going to be a problem, he was singing this tune:
If that’s true, where did this story come from? Clearly the reporter given the initial credit (Durbin) didn’t write it, and apparently neither did anyone else, as there’s no byline on it now. Also, way to throw those human editors under the bus, just to make sure no one was thinking about the AI’s role in this screw-up.
Guys like this remind me of the line, “Often wrong, never in doubt,” and as bad as that normally is, it’s really disturbing to see it from the editor of a major media outlet.
Journalists are supposed to play the skeptic, hedge their bets, play with caution and find balance. It keeps us out of trouble and allows us to see things as they are, not as we would like them to be. It also allows us to fess up when we’re wrong, something that (oddly enough) inspires confidence in the people we serve.
If Chris Quinn wants to talk up the positives and crap all over people who point out the negatives, that’s fine, but do it as a PR guy for an AI firm or as the prophet for some sort of futuristic tech cult.
Journalists don’t have the luxury of arrogant presumption.
In starting another new year of teaching, I’m always on the lookout for things that will inspire me enough to inspire my students. This year, I found it by dealing with my 5-year-old nieces, Abby and Sophia. Spending time with the twins gave me some key insights as to how best to challenge my own students. Hope some of these things might help you along as well:
REMEMBER TO WONDER: The best part about being a little kid, at least in my book, is that everything seems new and amazing in some of the best ways possible. Little kids wonder about stuff all the time, whether it’s how the refrigerator keeps stuff cold, or why nature deals some of us a bad hand. Here’s a conversation between Abby and me regarding the latter issue:
Her: “Uncle Cake! Why you have no hair?”
Me: “Well, I’m older than you, sweetie…”
Her: “Uncle Cake, my daddy’s old and he has hair. What happened?”
I wasn’t about to explain hereditary cruelty to the kid, but it was one of many conversations that had me thinking and laughing all at the same time, simply because one of the twins wanted to know something that literally had never occurred to me to consider.
Most of us used to wonder about stuff like this and we had no compunction about sharing it with others. However, as we got older, we started keeping our questions to ourselves, for fear of how we’d look in front of our peers or because we just didn’t care anymore.
RULES MATTER: We were over at my brother-in-law’s place swimming one day this summer, when Abby decided to be the lifeguard of the pool. She used her pretend binoculars to watch all of us, which was kind of cute until I apparently violated the rule against using a squirt gun against the lifeguard:
Her: “UNCLE CAKE! NO! YOU GET A TIMEOUT!”
Me: “You didn’t say squirting people was bad. You were squirting people before you became a lifeguard!”
SIX – SEVEN: I learned a long time ago that students tend to remember what I tell them, even if they remember it ass-backwards or for the wrong reasons. I thought about this when Sophia was showing me how she could count to ten using fingers.
We started with the pinkie on one hand with one, moving all the way through the thumb. I then raised my index finger and said, “And six…”
She replied by patiently putting her hand on mine and correcting me:
“No, Uncle Cake,” she said. “That is seven.” She then wiggled my thumb, “THIS is six.”
And thus it shall always be, from here into eternity…
Rest assured, I do know how to count to six, but I also was not taught that each finger had a specific purpose. I suppose I could have corrected her, but I’d prefer that she gets her counting down and that eventually she learns that each finger can represent a counting digit from a more credible source.
Remember that whole thing about rules? Sometimes they learn the rule to the point of being problematic. I’m thinking more about explaining the WHY they have to follow the rules, what the purpose of those rules are and how to understand what matters about those rules.
BE PERSISTENT: Most of what we do as journalists is about getting people to do things that are for the betterment of all, even when those people don’t want to do them. It might be getting them to share open records, provide an interview on a difficult topic or ratting someone out for doing shady stuff.
I’ve noticed that a lot of my students tend to give up after one or two emails, instead of really going after something like a dog chasing a car. I have also noticed that the twins are more than up to a challenge when it comes to getting something they want.
Case in point, when Amy visits, they always want her to stay over for the night. No matter what she says as to why she can’t do it, they’ve got a rebuttal.
“I don’t have a bed here.”
“You can sleep with us!”
“I have to work tomorrow.”
“We can wake you up extra early so you can drive home!”
“Uncle Cake is waiting for me at home and he misses me.”
“We’ll miss you more!”
In a lot of cases, Amy has to leave, but on more than one occasion, they wore her down. (To be fair, there are two of them and they have the energy of the Energizer Bunny on meth.) They’re never rude and don’t resort to tantrums. They’re just persistent to the point of running you out of excuses.
I don’t know what it is that makes the rest of us run out of steam so much faster (other than the Energizer Bunny meth thing) but I do know we can push harder to get more when we really want to. I’m thinking that’s going to be the goal of my reporting kids this year: Be persistent.
An internal investigation by The Athletic found that the relationship between Dianna Russini, its former senior N.F.L. reporter, and Mike Vrabel, the head coach of the New England Patriots, was a “clear violation” of the company’s standards.
In a report released Thursday detailing findings of its monthslong investigation, The Athletic said that the relationship gave the appearance of a conflict of interest and Ms. Russini should have revealed it to the company.
Russini first vigorously defended herself against these allegations, saying everything was taken out of context and she wasn’t going to dignify this non-story with a response.
Dianna Russini’s PR team making it clear that there’s nothing to this story….
RANDOM SIDE NOTE: Can I have her job? According to a story written after the relationship became public, Russini was making bank:
Ms. Russini was not just any reporter. The Athletic paid her an annual salary of close to $800,000, according to a former manager who had knowledge of her salary negotiation. This would have made her one of the highest-paid journalists at the Times Company.
She apparently filed somewhere north of 900 stories during her three years at the publication, along with appearing on podcasts, doing videos and more, so I’m not saying she didn’t work at her job, but damn… At what my kids are telling me they’re making coming out of college, we could staff a decent-sized newsroom out here for what The Athletic was paying the self-described “straight-up MILF.”
HYPOCRISY, THY NAME IS INSIDER: First things first for the journalism kids out there: Don’t have any kind of snuggly relationships of any kind with any source if you are a reporter.
If you somehow managed to find yourself with a potentially risky situation (as I once did in getting engaged to a city council rep, even though I didn’t cover city council as my beat), disclose the relationship ASAP and then figure out if the juice is worth the squeeze depending on the rules of your gig and the level of interest you have in your significant other.
But here’s the one question nobody seems OK with asking at any of these major media outlets:
Was the Vrabel situation worse than anything else “insiders” are doing?
I get that Americans are always going to clutch their pearls when sex-like-stuff becomes public and I know that women (particularly women covering sports) are constantly treated less favorably than men.
But let’s not pretend sports “insiders” are anything more than glorified PR agents that get paid way too much and get away with way more than they should.
The reporters tsk-tsking Russini used footage of this party to show that Vrabel wasn’t present, apparently because he was out “running the offense” with Russini or something. Apparently, it was fine for Glazer to set up a day-drinking session with the people he covers, and no one has tried to put a stop to an event older than the incoming college freshman.
Even without the whole “Oh my stars! She might have touched his manly virtue!” stuff, Russini seemed a bit ethically compromised by the spoils of stardom. She apparently bragged about hanging out with the who’s who of the NFL, and even trying to use a coach to get her out of a speeding ticket.
Other sports reporters, whose livelihoods depend on scoops and staying ahead of the pack, see what the “insiders” do and how well they are treated, so they figure if that’s the game, let’s go play it.
This is why we get more and more “anonymous sources” for less and less important content. It’s why we see more grandstanding and brand building from the “big names” in the media instead of following the same rules everyone else has to. It’s why we see people pushing the edge of the envelope in what is acceptable to cover and how much of a jagwad they feel comfortable being in covering it.
Professional sports loves themselves some PR, and basically, that’s what they get when they pick out their favorite mouthpieces and spoon feed them content they want to have in the public.
So, let’s stop pretending that Glazer, Schefter and dozens of other “reporters” who start every sentence with “The general manager told me exclusively that…” haven’t sold their journalistic souls for heavy bank and easier scoops.
They might not be pulling tongue with a coach in a hot tub, but they’re no less ethically compromised than someone in a romantic relationship with a source.
A friend and journalism professor put this challenge to the hivemind recently:
“I have been teaching headline writing the same way for decades and I think headlines have changed drastically in the last 10 years and no longer are we writing headlines the same way as sentences with a noun and a verb, but we are writing things that are more like teasers, invitations and clickable phrases. Does anyone have any material on how to write headlines for digital media (not print)? I need to update what I am teaching my practicum and journalism students.”
As I’ve always said, the blog is about what you need, when you need it, so here goes our look into the world of headlines for digital media:
THINGS THAT ARE THE SAME:
A number of things that we tend to think of when we look at traditional headlines remain valuable in writing digital media headlines. In looking into a number ofmedia outlets and organizations that are working on headlines or studying them, here are some things that they are pitching for today’s writers that should look familiar to those of us old enough to remember the 1980s well:
Short and Simple/Clear and Concise: Depending on which way you want to play this, the authors of these suggestions are trying to get at the same basic thing: Make sense for your readers and don’t screw around while doing it. I’m more of a fan of “clear and concise,” in that clarity and simplicity aren’t always the same thing and in most cases it’s better to be clear than simple. Still, the idea is all about not wasting your reader’s time or space on their screens.
Accuracy above all else: If it’s not right, it doesn’t matter. That means it’s important to do your research on the topic, read the story fully, understand what the words you are using mean and double/triple/quadruple check your head for any mistakes before you push the big red button.
Concrete nouns and vigorous verbs: As much as passive voice has a space in headlines in print (Kennedy killed; Trump elected president), you get a little more room in digital heads to work in noun-verb-object format and really nail down those first two items.
Answer “Why do I care?” above all else: If people don’t know why they should care about something, they’re not going to pay attention to it. In some cases, it’s an easy sell, while in other cases, you have to rub their nose into it like you’re training a dog that keeps pooping in the house, but it needs to be there in a meaningful way.
Consider the headline that just showed up in my feed while writing this:
US House passes funding bill to avert government shutdown
It hits most of the marks pretty simply: Short/simple, (9 words, 57 spaces including blanks) accurate, (House passed the bill, it was a funding bill, without it we would likely shut down the government) concrete noun/vigorous verb, why you care (no government shut down)
Now consider these other ones:
House passes short-term funding bill to prevent a shutdown before the election
House sends government funding bill to Trump to avert shutdown ahead of Midterms
Congress passes funding bill to avoid October shutdown, pushing fight past midterms
U.S. House Passes Homeland Security Funding Bill Ending Shutdown For All Department Of Homeland Security Agencies Except ICE and CBP
The verb in three of the four alternatives is the same (passes), with three of the four focusing on the House (vs. Congress). The alternatives tend to focus on the election while the original didn’t. All are longer than the original, but each has something more than the original included in there (in the case of that last one, way, way, way too much…)
THINGS THAT ARE DIFFERENT:
The digital world gives us several challenges that are crucial to be aware of when we’re moving away from print heads.
SIZE, IN A DIFFERENT WAY, DOESN’T MATTER: We talked about the importance of keeping things short in both digital and traditional headlines. However, there’s another size issue we need to consider. In newspapers, we refer to headline copy as “the big type,” as it was traditionally larger than body copy and the idea was that the bigger the story, the bigger the headline size. Look at some of the headlines written when World War II ended and you get the idea.
The end of World War II was a big enough deal to cover everything above the fold (and at least an inch or two below it) with two letters and a hyphen.
In the digital realm, size doesn’t matter in terms of the font, because search engines and news aggregators treat all words exactly the same. They don’t stop and say, “Oh, wow! This headline is huge! I better move it up in my results list.”
PEOPLE ARE ATTUNED TO HYPE SO AVOID IT: Like most things we are inundated with, people have gotten over being enticed or impressed with “EST” claims. THE BEST BRAND! THE FASTEST WAY TO MEET WOMEN! THE CHEAPEST AIRFARE IN THE WORLD!
In fact, using this approach will actually activate defenses of readers who will now be less likely to trust you and will be more likely to push back against you. It’s like when your lazy stoner roommate comes to you and says, “Hey, I want you to know I just did everyone’s dishes, cleaned the bathroom and put in a little extra for rent this month.” If your Spidey Sense isn’t going off at that point, something is wrong with you.
FOCUS ON “U” ELEMENTS: To generally write effective headlines, experts at American Writers and Artists offer the “4 U” approach:
Be USEFUL to the reader,
Provide him with a sense of URGENCY,
Convey the idea that the main benefit is somehow UNIQUE; and
Do all of the above in an ULTRA-SPECIFIC way.
Beyond the maxims and cute little clusters of advice, however, headline writing comes down to applying the basic skills you’ve learned within your writing classes to this point. Let’s get into the nitty-gritty stuff and look at some key ways to do this:
Identify your point in six words or less: One of the best bits of advice I have been given about writing is to boil everything you are doing down into one simple, declarative statement before you begin. If you can’t do that, you don’t know what you’re doing yet, and you need to go back to the drawing board. The more sure you are of the point you want to make, the easier this is and the more clearly you can do this. When you are kind of all over the place, you don’t know what you’re trying to say in the headline. When that happens, it’s probably safe to assume you’re going to be all over the place when it comes to everything else as well.
Start with a few words that define what you’re trying to accomplish. Don’t worry if they don’t form a perfect noun-verb-object structure. Also don’t worry if you’re not using declarative statements at this point. As you will learn later, these variables take on different values in your writing here than they have in everything else you’ve written to this point.
Custard is superior to ice cream
Write a better blog post
Study more effectively for finals
Avoid 8 a.m. classes
Is 4-wheel-drive worth it?
Selena Gomez or Taylor Swift?
In each case, we’ve identified a lane we intend to drive in and we did it in less than six words. This means we focused. Some focus could be better. “What does “worth it” mean?” or how are we comparing these singers? It’s all not perfect, but it gets us off the tee and into the middle of the fairway.
Usability experts talk about the 3 and 3 rule, which states that people scan headlines in the same way they scan text: They basically catch on to the first three words you write and the last three words you write. In the middle is kind of a mess of letters that they’ll go back to if the first three and last three words grab them.
With that in mind, you want to start strong and end strong on your headlines for the digital media world. If you’re lucky and keeping things tight, the middle is tiny compared to the first three and last three words. If you go back to the example head, you’ll see a good example of how this works:
Front 3: US House passes
Back 3: Avert government shutdown
If we dodged “US” it might be a bit stronger with “House passes funding” so, that’s something else to think about.
Focus on benefits: When you are doing feature pieces, particularly those in the “how to” range, you want people to see your story as the solution to all their problems.
People will smartly employ aggressive attention filters while scanning headlines and you’ll get through that filter much more easily if you spell out your benefits rather than imply them slyly in a nuanced fashion. The big type is supposed to hit you in the head with a hammer, so make sure it does.
Ask yourself, “What possible good will come to my reader from spending time with this thing that I’m writing?” Then focus on that:
Dinner for a king on a peasant’s paycheck
Save time studying for finals
Build your savings account without depriving yourself
Avoid stupid Facebook arguments with redneck friends
Learn why Putin is your friend
In many cases, the idea of “how to” is implied in there while in other cases, it’s just about learning something you need to know. However, the goal is to really tell people, “This has value. Read me.”
Pick words other people would pick: The easiest way to be found is to put yourself out there in a way that people would look for you. Let’s say your roommate had a really rough night and threw up in the kitchen sink before going to bed. You wake up the next morning and find this disaster of Jagermeister and Taco Bell has coagulated in your sink and has somehow after about 30 seconds of trying to run the garbage disposal, it stops and you’ve got no idea what went wrong, but you still have a mess on your hands.
You can’t call the landlord and you don’t have money for a plumber, what are some words you would choose to google to get you out of this jam? (garbage disposal, sink, plug, stuck, broken, fix MORE).
The point is, you wouldn’t Google “Lousy roommate” and “food death spiral in the sink” even though those would likely be the first words out of your mouth in describing this disaster to anyone who would listen to you. Those other words are what you need to get out of this jam.
In many cases, we would call the words you would pick out keywords or SEO-driven search terms. What you need to do is figure out what words go with your topics as part of the headline. In marketing, people often refer to these kinds of terms as part of a word bank or a brand dictionary, but either way, you want to find them and use them. Basically, pick words other people are going to pick.
Follow the formula: Certain headlines match up with certain types of digital pieces, much in the same way that certain topics lend themselves to certain types of stories and blog posts. Here are some examples of what I mean:
Instructional post: “How to avoid talking politics with racist relatives at the holidays.”
Listicle post: “10 things only children of the 1980s will understand about watching movies.”
Profile post: “The Finnish Farm Boy who held the Russian Army at bay for six months.”
Analysis post: “A deeper look at why US/Iran nuclear deal will lead to Armageddon” or “Five things the Iranians didn’t ask for in the nuclear deal but should have.”
Cheat Sheet: “A helpful series of MS Word quick-keys that will speed up your typing.”
Certain words match up with certain topics: Numbers with lists, “how to” with instructions, “helpful” or “easy” or “simple” with cheat-sheets. Analyses rely on “deeper” or “smarter” or what have you. When you think of the types of posts you read, you can now see how the words match up with the types of posts.
Lenka Istvanova analyzed blogs that got the most clicks based on headlines and found a simple formula that tends to relate to most of the things we want to see in a headline:
I normally take a break this time of year, as to get ready for the semester and mourn the end of summer, but this year, my decision on when to call it quits for a while was the result of a funny conversation with my mom.
She called me to tell me that a lady from her old neighborhood had died and that she decided to attend the funeral. Mom had taught four of the woman’s five children over the course of her teaching career and wanted to pay her respects to the family.
Mom said the kids were all grown up and they all remembered her, despite all the time had passed.
“Do you know what question they asked me first?,” she said to me. “‘Do you still have that Corvette? Does it still have the side pipes?”
To be fair, it is a really sweet ride…
She assured them the car was still part of the family. She also noted that she was still substitute teaching.
“Are you still ruling with an iron fist?” she told me they asked.
At that moment, I started thinking about what weird-ass things students will remember about me if they see me years later. It won’t be the “noun-verb-object holy trinity” or the “take a breath and read the lead aloud” suggestion, but instead it’ll be:
“Do you still have a jillion bobbleheads?”
“Are you still telling kids weird stories about that old hockey team?”
“Hey, you’re still bald!”
Thus, it might be time to seriously reconsider truck driving school or something…
In the meantime, I’ll take a couple weeks off and get back with you all in early September.
