Week 11 - Headlines

Week 11 - Headlines

Learning about headlines this week was both challenging and fun for me.   I’m not generally a creative person so coming up with headlines was a challenge but I found myself getting sidetracked finding them.  There were so many headlines that caught my interest, I had to stop myself from reading all of the articles and stories that go along with them.  This is exactly what happens when headlines do what they’re supposed to do.  They grab the reader’s attention.   Although headlines should be simple and relatable to your story, sometimes being too simple can make your article look less than intelligent.  Surely the journalist who had written the article below should, along with his readers realize that most gun shops will contain weapons. 

Then again, if your headline is as long as this one, you might want to rethink the simplicity angle.  This headline is too long, confusing and not really interesting. Once you wade through it a couple of times to just figure out the headline, a fair amount of readers won’t be interested in the actual story.

Keeping your headlines to a reasonable length, relating them to your story content and maintaining a professional demeanor, even while using humor, are three of the most useful pieces of advice I received this week.