“Headlines don’t sell papes. Newsies sell papes.”
Headlines have three purposes:
- Summarize the main point of the story
- Get readers’ attention
- Sell papers
Headline writing is an art. You must be informational, interesting, and possibly clever in a limited number of words (depending on space and font size). Today’s Tweeters who aim to be profound or clever in 140 characters or less could learn from artful headline writers.
The ultimate purpose of a headline is to give readers the briefest sense of a story so they can decide whether or not they want to read it. Of course, you want them to want to read it, so your goal is to deftly use language to draw them in. However, you have to still maintain your ethical standards: teasers that entice readers and don’t deliver are unethical. Also, being clever can backfire if the headline ends up having more than one meaning. The second unintended meaning may merely be funny as in the example above, or it could end up embarrassing you, your readers, and your newspaper if no one catches it prior to publication.
The purpose of this webquest lesson is to review the basic principles of headline writing in order to improve your skills. Use the following resources to answer the questions on your sheet.
- Types of headlines: a quick PowerPoint presentation from Purdue
- Writing Effective Headlines from Malcolm Gibson University of Kansas
- Great headline tips from Professor Gibson (there are two slides)
- Bill Mitchell’s Guide to Writing Headlines.
A fun challenge
I wondered if turning the text of a news story into a word cloud would reveal insight into an obvious headline. So, here’s a challenge for you. Study the Wordle below. Write a headline from it. Then, go online to see the actual story and headline. How did you do? Here’s a pdf of the image if you can’t open it.
More fun, on your own time: