Call me a grumpy old codger, but I liked the old way better. For one thing, I used to have at least a rudimentary idea of how a newspaper got produced: On deadline, drunks with cigars wrote stories that were edited by constipated but knowledgeable people, then printed on paper by enormous machines operated by people with stupid hats and dirty faces ... everything is different today, and it's much more confusing. For one thing, there are no real deadlines anymore, because stories are constantly being updated for the Web. All stories are due now, and most of the constipated people are gone, replaced by multiplatform idea triage specialists. In this hectic environment, mistakes are more likely to be made, meaning that a story might identify Uzbekistan as "a subspecies of goat."
Weingarten gets into the business of writing headlines, too. A headline used to be written for human eyes, and liberties were occasionally taken with humor and taste. Like when my old editor, the late great Verne Peyser referred to the McDonalds shooting in San Ysidro (the one where the guy went nuts and killed more than 20 people) as "McMassacre." Or when the Fontana Herald-News ran the story of Redd Foxx' death with the headline "Fred joins Elizabeth." Now, that's headline writing.
Not any more. Here's what Weingarten says:
... even the best headlines will be changed to something dull but utilitarian. That's because, on the Web, headlines aren't designed to catch readers' eyes. They are designed for "search engine optimization," meaning that readers who are looking for information about something will find the story, giving the newspaper a coveted "eyeball." Putting well-known names in headlines is considered shrewd, even if creativity suffers ...
Which explains the Lady Gaga headline in the WaPo story. Weingarten mentioned the name of the pop tart du jour only peripherally, and that's what became the headline. And myself, well, I'm gonna put her in my headline too, just to see what happens.
Anyway, the whole industry has changed. If I showed up in a newsroom today, I wouldn't recognize it. Or like it.
I reckon I can complain about it. Back around 1990 I thought it was a horrible travesty when the newspaper where I was working formed focus groups among the community to shape our editorial policy. Shoot, accountants and doctors don't do this to determine how they're going to do business, are they?
But now see what's become of the news trade:
Recently some newspaper out around Pasadena outsourced much of their editorial work to ... people in India. Folks who don't speak the language, but they sure make a lot less than even a poorly-paid journalist stateside.
And news outlets like USA Today, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, and SF Gate farm some of their work out to a huge Web content company. I can't complain about that; I do a lot of work for that particular Web content company (under an assumed name), and they do have a lot of good writers in their stable. But the copy is competent but colorless, and designed more for search engines than real live human readers.
Oh, yes. Extra points for mentioning pop idols; it gets them on the search engines faster.
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(Photo: What's she doing in my newspaper? Photo by Billie Joe's Entourage.)
