The headline is the text indicating the content or nature of the article below it, typically by providing a form of brief summary of its contents.
The large type front page headline did not come into use until the late 19th century when increased competition between newspapers led to the use of attention-getting headlines.
It is sometimes termed a news hed, a deliberate misspelling that dates from production flow during hot type days, to notify the composing room that a written note from an editor concerned a headline and should not be set in type. [1]
Headlines in English often use a set of grammatical rules known as headlinese , designed to meet stringent space requirements by, for example, leaving out forms of the verb "to be" and choosing short verbs like "eye" over longer synonyms like "consider".
A headline's purpose is to quickly and briefly draw attention to the story. It is generally written by a copy editor, but may also be written by the writer, the page layout designer, or other editors. The most important story on the front page above the fold may have a larger headline if the story is unusually important. The New York Times 's 21 July 1969 front page stated, for example, that "MEN WALK ON MOON", with the four words in gigantic size spread from the left to right edges of the page. [2]
In the United States, headline contests are sponsored by the American Copy Editors Society, the National Federation of Press Women, and many state press associations; some contests consider created content already published, [3] others are for works written with winning in mind. [4]
Research in 1980 classified newspaper headlines into four broad categories: questions, commands, statements, and explanations. [5] Advertisers and marketers classify advertising headlines slightly differently into questions, commands, benefits, news/information, and provocation. [6]
A study indicates there has been a substantial increase of sentiment negativity and decrease of emotional neutrality in headlines across written popular U.S.-based news media since 2000. [8] [7]
Skilled[ clarify ] newspaper readers "spend most of their reading time scanning the headlines—rather than reading [all or most of] the stories". [9]
Headlines can bias readers toward a specific interpretation and readers struggle to update their memory in order to correct initial misconceptions in the cases of misleading or inappropriate headlines. [10]
One approach investigated as a potential countermeasure to online misinformation is "attaching warnings to headlines of news stories that have been disputed by third-party fact-checkers", albeit its potential problems include e.g. that false headlines that fail to get tagged are considered validated by readers. [11]
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The use of "slam" in headlines has attracted criticism on the grounds that the word is overused and contributes to media sensationalism. [12] [13] The violent imagery of words like "slam", "blast", "rip", and "bash" has drawn comparison to professional wrestling, where the primary aim is to titillate audiences with a conflict-laden and largely predetermined narrative, rather than provide authentic coverage of spontaneous events. [14]
"Crash blossoms" is a term used to describe headlines that have unintended ambiguous meanings, such as The Times headline "Hospitals named after sandwiches kill five". The word 'named' is typically used in headlines to mean "blamed/held accountable/named [in a lawsuit]", [15] but in this example it seems to say that the hospitals' names were related to sandwiches. The headline was subsequently changed in the electronic version of the article to remove the ambiguity. [16] The term was coined in August 2009 on the Testy Copy Editors web forum [17] after the Japan Times published an article entitled "Violinist Linked to JAL Crash Blossoms" [18] (since retitled to "Violinist shirks off her tragic image"). [19]
Headlinese is an abbreviated form of news writing style used in newspaper headlines. [20] Because space is limited, headlines are written in a compressed telegraphic style, using special syntactic conventions, [21] including:
Some periodicals have their own distinctive headline styles, such as Variety and its entertainment-jargon headlines, most famously "Sticks Nix Hick Pix".
To save space and attract attention, headlines often use extremely short words, many of which are not otherwise in common use, in unusual or idiosyncratic ways: [27] [28] [29]
Some famous headlines in periodicals include:
The New Republic editor Michael Kinsley began a contest to find the most boring newspaper headline. [37] According to him, no entry surpassed the one that had inspired him to create the contest: "WORTHWHILE CANADIAN INITIATIVE", [38] over a column by The New York Times' Flora Lewis. [39] In 2003, New York Magazine published a list of eleven "greatest tabloid headlines". [40]
The New York Times (NYT) is an American daily newspaper based in New York City. The New York Times covers domestic, national, and international news, and publishes opinion pieces, investigative reports, and reviews. As one of the longest-running newspapers in the United States, it serves as one of the country's newspapers of record. As of May 2024, the newspaper has a readership of 9.9 million digital-only subscribers and 640,000 print subscribers, making it the second-largest newspaper in the United States by print circulation, only behind the Wall Street Journal. The Times has received 137 Pulitzer Prizes as of 2023, the most of any publication, among other accolades. The New York Times is published by The New York Times Company; since 1896, the company has been chaired by the Ochs-Sulzberger family, including its current chairman and the paper's publisher, A. G. Sulzberger. The Times is headquartered at The New York Times Building in Manhattan.
In journalism, yellow journalism and the yellow press are American newspapers that use eye-catching headlines and sensationalized exaggerations for increased sales. The English term is chiefly used in the US. In the United Kingdom, a similar term is tabloid journalism. Other languages, e.g. Russian, sometimes have terms derived from the American term. Yellow journalism emerged in the intense battle for readers by two newspapers in New York City in 1890s. It was not common in other cities.
A broadsheet is the largest newspaper format and is characterized by long vertical pages, typically of 22.5 inches (57 cm). Other common newspaper formats include the smaller Berliner and tabloid–compact formats.
The Herald Sun is a conservative daily tabloid newspaper based in Melbourne, Australia, published by The Herald and Weekly Times, a subsidiary of News Corp Australia, itself a subsidiary of the Murdoch owned News Corp. The Herald Sun primarily serves Melbourne and the state of Victoria and shares many articles with other News Corporation daily newspapers, especially those from Australia.
News style, journalistic style, or news-writing style is the prose style used for news reporting in media, such as newspapers, radio and television.
The Daily Telegraph, also nicknamed The Tele, is an Australian tabloid newspaper published by Nationwide News Pty Limited, a subsidiary of News Corp Australia, itself a subsidiary of News Corp. It is published Monday through Saturday and is available throughout Sydney, across most of regional and remote New South Wales, the Australian Capital Territory and South East Queensland.
The Daily Mirror is a British national daily tabloid newspaper. Founded in 1903, it is owned by parent company Reach plc. From 1985 to 1987, and from 1997 to 2002, the title on its masthead was simply The Mirror. It had an average daily print circulation of 716,923 in December 2016, dropping to 587,803 the following year. Its Sunday sister paper is the Sunday Mirror. Unlike other major British tabloids such as The Sun and the Daily Mail, the Mirror has no separate Scottish edition; this function is performed by the Daily Record and the Sunday Mail, which incorporate certain stories from the Mirror that are of Scottish significance.
Journalese is the artificial or hyperbolic, and sometimes over-abbreviated, language regarded as characteristic of the news style used in popular media. Joe Grimm, formerly of the Detroit Free Press, likened journalese to a "stage voice": "We write journalese out of habit, sometimes from misguided training, and to sound urgent, authoritative and, well, journalistic. But it doesn't do any of that."
Michael E. Kinsley is an American political journalist and commentator. Primarily active in print media as both a writer and editor, he also became known to television audiences as a co-host on Crossfire.
Today was a national newspaper in the United Kingdom that was published between 1986 and 1995.
Varsity is the oldest of Cambridge University's main student newspapers. It has been published continuously since 1947 and is one of only three fully independent student newspapers in the UK. It moved back to being a weekly publication in Michaelmas 2015, and is published every Friday during term time.
Mumbai Mirror was an English-language newspaper that was initially launched in 2005 by the Times Group as part of a ringfencing tactic to fight emerging competition in the city, mainly from Zee–Bhaskar's then joint newspaper, Daily News and Analysis. Mumbai Mirror was downsized and digitised by its owners at The Times Group on 5 December 2020 during the Covid-19 lockdown.
The Paper is a 1994 American comedy-drama film directed by Ron Howard and starring Michael Keaton, Glenn Close, Marisa Tomei, Randy Quaid and Robert Duvall. It received an Academy Award nomination for Best Original Song for "Make Up Your Mind", which was written and performed by Randy Newman.
"Sticks Nix Hick Pix" is a famous headline printed in Variety, a newspaper covering Hollywood and the entertainment industry, on July 17, 1935, over an article about the reaction of rural audiences to movies about rural life. Variety was known for its playful use of Broadway and Hollywood jargon to pack as much meaning as possible into a small headline or article; examples include "H'wood" and "biz".
Libertatea is a Romanian daily newspaper and online news website covering current affairs, entertainment, sports and lifestyle. It was founded on December 22, 1989 (12:45 p.m.), by Octavian Andronic, as "the first independent newspaper of the Romanian Revolution of 1989".
The New York Evening Graphic was a tabloid newspaper published from 1924 to 1932 by Macfadden Publications. Exploitative and mendacious in its short life, the Graphic exemplified tabloid journalism and launched the careers of Walter Winchell, Louis Sobol, and sportswriter-turned-columnist and television host Ed Sullivan.
The Sun is a British tabloid newspaper, published by the News Group Newspapers division of News UK, itself a wholly owned subsidiary of Lachlan Murdoch's News Corp. It was founded as a broadsheet in 1964 as a successor to the Daily Herald, and became a tabloid in 1969 after it was purchased by its current owner. The Sun had the largest daily newspaper circulation in the United Kingdom, but was overtaken by freesheet rival Metro in March 2018.
(Almost) straight outta Compton is part of a headline from a 2016 article written by Ruth Styles and published by the MailOnline, the website of the British tabloid newspaper the Daily Mail. The headline has been criticised and described as being an example of racist press commentary towards the American former actress Meghan Markle, prior to marrying the British Prince Harry.
"Best Sex I've Ever Had" is a headline that appeared on the front page of the New York Post on February 16, 1990. The headline is purportedly a quote from Marla Maples, who would become the second wife of businessman Donald Trump. The quote refers to Trump's supposed sexual prowess. Trump was married to Ivana Trump at the time of the headline; the couple's divorce was granted that year. The headline appeared during a media frenzy concerning the Trumps' marriage and his affair with Maples.
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