Lately, I have been using RSS feeds a lot. And I’ve set up my system to give me the latest headlines every hour.
That means I get a list of headlines to view, and I click the ones that are interesting. Most of the time, I find that bloggers and experienced Web editors do a pretty good job of writing headlines so that I can decide whether I am interested or not.
Take a typical Wired headline like “Meteor Impact Theory Takes a Hit.” Yes, it’s clever. But even more important to me is that it contains enough information for me to decide to click or not. And it does.
But what do I do with headlines like “Dramatic change” (which turned out to be about a change in the government’s attitude toward immigrants) or “An unfinished story” (this deals with the U.S. inauguration). And these are just a couple of random picks from a Norwegian feed I read last night. Both those headlines belong in a newspaper or on a website, where there is room for a picture and a blurb. They have no place in my RSS reader. Or in my mobile phone’s WAP reader. Because I can’t even make up my mind if I’m interested.
With RSS and WAP, more and more journalism relies on headlines alone. So they better be good. And they better be informative.
For inspiration, look to CNN.com, where editors do a fine job leaning heavy on headlines.
We have made it easy to comment on posts, however we require civility and encourage full names to that end (first initial, last name is OK). Please read our guidelines here before commenting.