What We’re Thankful For
November 27, 2014Here’s to an embarrassing exit for The School Up North
November 28, 2014
Well, I guess this is “Black Friday.” Welcome to WWW. Maybe you are reading this while you wait in line to get a deal. Maybe you’re not reading this at all because you’re sleeping in and not thinking about Black Friday at all. I’ve yet to partake in Black Friday and I’m in a very live and let live part of my life, but I will say that the people I think about on days like this are the people who were scheduled to work. The people who are going to have to be referees for the hyper-competitive shoppers today. Remember that today if you’re out shopping. This hyper shopping day is out of the norm for them too.
Anatomy of a Clickbait Headline…
On Tuesday I wrote a headline about Johnny Manziel after hearing Mike Pettine on Mike and Mike. Of course, being the day after the Johnny Manziel fight news, Pettine was forced to address Manziel with the nationally syndicated ESPN show. Mike Pettine handled it expertly, by the way, when he stated that the Browns are on top of the situation and that nothing they’ve seen so far would keep Manziel from playing this weekend. So, I set to writing it up. The last thing I did was put the headline together in our content management system. Apparently the title I chose set everyone off as being “clickbait.”
Pettine says Johnny Manziel could play Sunday
I’m not here to defend the headline, per se. Perception is reality when it comes to this stuff. If people thought it was misleading or they were misled, then what’s the difference what I have to say about it? When writing and publishing on the web, intent is nearly lost immediately as impact crushes it over the head repeatedly.
Whether you believe me or not, I just thought this was a truthful, concise headline. I did it very quickly at the end of writing up the post. I wanted to get keywords like “Pettine” and “Johnny Manziel” in there, and I probably should have worked harder to get the word “fight” in too. Maybe the inclusion of the word “fight” would have led everyone down the road that Pettine was merely talking about Manziel’s status after the alleged fight in Cleveland. At some point, even as someone who isn’t trying to bait people into clicking erroneously, I am conscious that Google likes shorter headlines and to get keywords in there. Anyway, I didn’t do as good a job as I needed to and people let me know about it.
I had a nice interaction with a couple people on Twitter who basically said, “Craig, this headline is a bit sketchy.” We talked it out and I felt like everyone understood each other, but the Facebook page was decidedly more angry.
“Someone is desperate for web page visits…”
“If WFNY keeps going down the clickbait road, what I will do next is amazing (read another site).”
That last one stuck with me a bit. I screwed up a headline and accidentally misled people, but now all of a sudden what I did is apparently part of some pattern of behavior? Apparently WFNY has taken a direction of using headlines to grab traffic in a manipulative manner?
Again, I’m not looking to shirk responsibility for my misstep, but I think I’m taking the brunt for the awful amount of real clickbait sites that pepper the world today. I think people are so slammed at Facebook (notice the reaction there was worse) with the types of headlines that end with, “You won’t believe what happens next!”
It stinks and it makes me sad. The fact of the matter is that I do want traffic to WFNY. I want to write about things that people care about. I want to have opinions and news and info that people want to read. The last thing I want though is a bunch of people to come read about Johnny Manziel only to feel misled, fooled or even worse. The last thing I want is people to come to WFNY and have a negative opinion of me or the site. Our payoff isn’t wild traffic for crazy viral quick hitters.
Maybe my headline always would have caught everyone off guard and been categorized as misleading, but I think the proliferation of awful clickbait websites has created an environment where I can’t even expect the benefit of the doubt. That stinks.
I’ll continue to try to write better headlines.
Pomplamoose gives us some insight into touring realities…
Andrew and I have been talking about these kinds of things behind the scenes for years now. The business of the music industry is fascinating to both of us and I know I’ve crushed you over the head with Spotify conversations lately. This is such a great read about the band Pomplamoose and the big tour they decided to put together this year. It is an intricate, detailed accounting of exactly how much it cost them to go on tour, how much they earned in income, and in the end, how they actually lost money on the tour itself.
But this isn’t a sob story. We knew it would be an expensive endeavor, and we still chose to make the investment. We could have played a duo show instead of hiring six people to tour with us. That would have saved us over $50,000, but it was important at this stage in Pomplamoose’s career to put on a wild and crazy rock show. We wanted to be invited back to every venue, and we wanted our fans to bring their friends next time. The loss was an investment in future tours.
It was a fascinating read. It was an eye opening one too, as I came to understand another of the many business models that are employed in this day and age of the music industry.
My favorite bit is this.
We’re entering a new era in history: the space between “starving artist” and “rich and famous” is beginning to collapse. YouTube has signed up over a million partners (people who agree to run ads over their videos to make money from their content). The “creative class” is no longer emerging: it’s here, now.
We, the creative class, are finding ways to make a living making music, drawing webcomics, writing articles, coding games, recording podcasts. Most people don’t know our names or faces. We are not on magazine covers at the grocery store. We are not rich, and we are not famous.
Your weekly moment of soccer zen…
This week’s goes back to 1994 from a French championship of some kind. It’s an awesome goal as the ball is volleyed back and forth before being crushed into the back of the net past the keeper.
Baby Please Come Home is my favorite Christmas song…
It’s now officially time to play Christmas music. This is easily my favorite Christmas song. I even like the Death Cab remake.
Here’s the Death Cab version. It’s not as good as Darlene Love, of course, but the song is still amazing.
5 Comments
Regarding the clickbait discussion: I count myself among those who think the headline was unnecessary at best, misleading at worst. I certainly don’t see it as a pattern, and unless it persists I won’t be taking my ball elsewhere. And I certainly appreciate you owning up to the misstep. But let me ask this: why not change it?
Akron goes for bowl eligibility today vs Kent Read-Kent Write-Kent State today.
Go Zips!
re headline, Craig, it was misleading because any fan reading it would think it was about which QB would play. You do so many things well that I suspect your headline conception process includes every important thing except Step 1: What will the reader, who doesn’t know what story you’ve been working on, think the story object is at the important first glance? Sound advice I received long ago on how to be clear and kind to readers: tell them what you’re going to tell them, tell them, tell them what you’ve told them. Step 1 was the fail there. Headlines tell the reader how much time, if any, to invest in your piece. You’ve developed a trust relationship with your readers. Maybe take the blowback as a compliment that they expect you to be kinder to them.
Re: headline
I read the article and thought “I get what he was thinking but it was a bit off” and then I MOVED ON WITH MY LIFE.
I’m sorry the internet made you sad. We need some real world monitoring authority to hand out citations to the internet police who are abusing their powers.
Craig, you are the man. I appreciate you explaining your thought process. Harv said it all better than I am capable of, it struck me as misleading because I respect what this website has to say. Also, the headline has turned out to be prophetic! Keep on keeping on man, this site is great.