Instead of summarizing the story that’s only a click away, these cyber “heads” merely tease readers with a tantalizingly vague or misleading tidbit, to assure that they will, in fact, click on the story itself. In other words, a journalistic mainstay that should tell you what’s what at a glance instead serves only to lure you into the sideshow tent, to see if there really is a bearded lady in there.
There are a million examples of his phenomenon day in and day out, but here’s one case in point.
AOL ran this headline the other day: “Earth’s Galaxy Heads Toward Collision” The subhead was even more terrifying. It read: “A neighboring galaxy is bearing down on the Milky Way -- and NASA astronomers are predicting it will be a head-on hit.”
Oh my God! How much time do we have left? Will I get to celebrate one more Fourth of July before worlds collide? If the Milky Way is going to disintegrate into a massive cloud of cosmic dust on, say, April 30 of next year, does that mean I can risk not filing my tax returns in 2013? Should I skip Christmas shopping this year? Inquiring minds want to know!
But going to the story put quite a different spin on things, because the headline there was more in line with what you’d expect to find in a newspaper: “Milky Way, Andromeda Galaxy To Collide In 4 Billion Years, NASA Says”
You know, I exercise. I eat well. I don’t smoke. I get a physical every year. I even put up with the unpleasantness of “the prep” that precedes colonoscopies. (Need I say more?) But four billion years? I’m sure I’ll shuffle off this mortal coil within one billion years, tops, no matter how well I take care of myself. So this is one looming catastrophe that it’s hard to work up a sweat about. Which a real headline would have made clear from the get-go.
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