You’ll never guess what this column’s about

You are the editor of a local newspaper, and a writer submits a story about a burglary in your town. You live in a low crime area that has only experienced one other burglary the entire year. Should you “sell” this story with a sensational headline?

This is the question some newspaper editors ask themselves when writing headlines … and most answer “yes.”

“Local burglary rate doubles, residents concerned.”

Although sensational headlines can be factual, they can also be misleading and diminish the one virtue important in the news industry – credibility.

One solution many newspapers have begun to employ is the question headline.

“Local home burglarized, could yours be next?”

Sometimes it is not what the media says in a headline, but what it doesn’t say.

I was watching a cable news channel last week when the anchor said, “Coming up, car sales are up, but you’ll never guess where.”

I waited to discover that car sales in China had increased. I didn’t feel misled because the statement was true – I wouldn’t have guessed where. However, I also wouldn’t have waited through the commercials if they had said, “Car sales are up in China, more after the break.”

As consumers of news, we need to look at headlines as if they are “loss leaders” – the term used to describe that cheap digital camera the electronics store uses to get you in the door so they can sell you a more expensive camera that actually works.

A headline should be considered an advertisement used by the media to get us into a story, not a story’s most important element. So next time you read a sensational headline, believe it only after you have read the entire story.

With that point, it suddenly occurred to me that this column needed a headline. I thought about using, “Sensational headlines spread rumors!” but decided against it. Then I thought I might use, “Are you the victim of misleading headlines?” but decided against that, too.

I eventually settled on “You’ll never guess what this column’s about” … So, did you guess?