Last week there was an article in the Media Guardian, entitled Search for the perfect headline about the debate over whether publishers should change the way in which they write headlines when writing for the web. Whilst it was a very interesting article, the attitude of some of the figures from the world of traditional publishing who were quoted, made me worry that they might be missing some very important points.

Fergus Shanahan, executive editor of The Sun, admitted that it is important for journalists to adapt; but he went on to say:

Often a reader has already selected what to read, either by going direct to a publisher’s website or using a search engine. So the job of ’selling’ the story to the consumer does not apply.

I would have to argue with this as the job of selling a story to search users is, I believe, much harder than on a newspaper stand.

A search result is essentially made up of a headline, two lines of text & a URL: it is therefore more important than ever that the searcher can understand what the story is about and how it will answer the need for information which caused them to carry out the search. This of course assumes that the headline and article have been written in such a way so as to show up high enough in the search rankings for anyone to even see it (as most people simply do not go past the 1st page).

In a similar vein, Keith Howitt of the Independent was quoted as saying:

If subs are told to write headlines aimed at gaining hits on the internet, then I think that’s a silly, short-sighted and possibly dangerous road to travel down.

If I worked at The Independent I might think that anything that could be done to drive readership, and therefore advertising revenue, would be a good thing. Again, Mr Howitt’s quote shows a misunderstanding of why headlines should be crafted differently online: it is not to chase hits (itself a meaningless term) but simply to take into account the different reading habits of people online.

As The Guardian’s own Peter Preston explained in an article last year, the pun as headline is in fact a relatively modern invention and one that does not really deserve the spirited defence that so many seem prepared to give it. Clarity & ease of understanding should be the aim of all headline writers, whatever the medium they’re destined for.

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