I’ll be honest, I don’t even want to read articles anymore. Its just crazy cabinet nominees every time. Wars happening. Nothing I can control. I just post something sarcastic or jokes in the comments. The only thing I care is if a hurricane is headed in my direction.
Y’all actually read all this shit? How does anyone have the energy?
Worked for a newspaper for many years. This is a great question.
Good headlines are both intended to give reasonable summaries and drive readers toward articles they’d like to read, because newspapers – and news media congregation systems in general – don’t have a true table of contents, only a series of categories under which article types live. Headlines, at a glance, function as a table of contents in newsprint formats because of this: you can scan for what you find interesting, but don’t have to intake the whole newspaper page to understand what’s being reported.
App scrolling through headlines, then, is functionally the same thing. Just a different UX, is all.
What I find really worrying though is the trend to pick headlines that don’t summarize, but sensationalize and twist the content. And that’s not just a tabloid problem.
I know that this is designed to generate more clicks, but since most people skip most of the content, only the headlines stick. And if these are wrong, misinformation will stick.