The Southern Ontario/WNY Radio-TV Forum / Online News Headlines Have Changed Markedly In The Last 20 Years

**Posted by SpinningWheel** May 28, 2025 4:59 pm

Something that irritates me almost every day. It results in wasting time by landing on useless news reports and a lot of them are AI generated.

A study of online headlines shows that they've mutated from informative to clickbait in the last 20 years.

Online News Headlines Have Changed Markedly In The Last 20 Years

"The analysis focused on linguistic and structural changes in headlines since 2000. These changes reflect not only changes in editorial practice, but also the growing importance of headlines as a key element in the digital competition for attention. Unlike in print journalism, where headlines primarily need to be clear and concise, online headlines are used strategically to generate clicks."

**Posted by RadioActive** May 28, 2025 5:15 pm

Don't know if you saw this thread, but it's slightly related. The picture is the giveaway.

**Posted by SpinningWheel** May 28, 2025 5:37 pm

RadioActive wrote:
Don't know if you saw this thread, but it's slightly related. The picture is the giveaway.

That's a funny one. A friend of mine passed on back in 2022 and his nickname was 'The Original Kid Rock'. Keith was an old friend dating back to high school and fairly well known in the Toronto entertainment circuit. There were several legitimate articles on his death published, even one by Allan Cross. Some of them were totally out in left field. He called himself that name because as a DJ, he came up with the name Kid Rock before the better known Kid Rock. He even persuaded Kid Rock to record his outgoing voicemail message. Anyway, some of the obituaries were clearly written by AI because they confused some elements of his life with those of Kid Rock musician. They were hilarious and he would have loved it. Some of his friends posted them on social media without even noticing the wild inaccuracies. All of them were posted online within days of his passing.

**Posted by Forward Power** May 28, 2025 5:52 pm

As a radio guy from a family of print people, I absolutely cannot stand clickbait and clickbait-style forward-referencing headlines. I should not have to click into a story to find out what it's about - the headline should summarize the item in a few words, e.g. "$5.8 million price tag for [government project]" and not something along the lines of "here's how much [government project] will cost taxpayers". I also find it mind-boggling that the CBC, of all news organizations, uses clickbait-style headlines; thank goodness The Canadian Press doesn't use them.