Are headlines obsolete?

Or, words go here and here and here

The out-of-date is really having a moment. By the rules of cultural journalism, upon which I cut my teeth, three isolated incidents may legally be described as a trend. (Though if you can only scrape together two, you can call it a trendlet.)

So consider first the new book Extinct: A Compendium of Obsolete Objects. From arsenic wallpaper to cassette tapes, it’s a collection of things that seemed like a good idea at the time.

Exhibit B: Pamela Paul’s recent book 100 Things We’ve Lost To The Internet, featuring a series of short obits for patience, empathy, humility, closure, penmanship, and TV Guide.

As for the third, well, I’ll grab it from the wisdom contained in Tom Whitwell’s always edifying year-end list of things learned. 

12. How to write good email subject lines: Keep it short (33 characters), avoid journalistic assumptions, never stop experimenting.

Which journalistic assumptions? Conflict, context, and questions are all not as popular as the newsroom hivemind likes to think. The lessons come from Brad Wolverton, director of content at The Hustle and a man who presumably lives in his inbox. 

“If it bleeds, it leads,” they always told us, but Wolverton suggests that antagonistic subject lines underperform.

Don’t people just want to understand? Apparently not, as he suggests “Subject, explained” is inbox poison.

And when a subject line asks a question, readers just don’t take the time to answer. 

All of which drives another handful of nails into the coffin of Headlines As We Knew Them, though the funeral has been underway for decades. Back in 2009, a newspaper editor of the old school wrote a tirade over the inevitable loss of “sweetly goofy and slightly shopworn” headlines like “The marinating of an ancient rhymer,” the display copy for a review of a  Nicholson Baker novel that he argued would be rejected by the SEO godbots. (Only the unpublishing of that tirade keeps its memory alive.)

Emails still need subject lines and stories still need titles, but perhaps not the too-clever-by-half display that rattles around in my brain like nickels in the dryer. “Orange is the new snack” for a story on pumpkin spice creep.“Shhhharcuterie” for the one about the secret deli. “When putsch comes to love” off the news that a military coup in Thailand was warmly welcomed by the citizens. And I still cling to “Paint misbehavin’” as a great headline about graffiti in galleries.

I see the data, and yet: I am here for the marinating of an ancient rhymer. I may even be that ancient rhymer. 

Ultimately, the law is on my side. I refer here to Bettridge’s Law of Headlines, which states that “Any headline that ends in a question mark can be answered by the word no.” Therefore the subject line of this email, regardless of whether you chose to open it, has saved the clever headline for another day.

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Quick quips; lightning

“All successful newspapers are ceaselessly querulous and bellicose. They never defend anyone or anything if they can help it; if the job is forced upon them, they tackle it by denouncing someone or something else.”
—  H.L. Mencken

“Advertising has annihilated the power of the most powerful adjectives.”
— Paul Valéry

“Ruins are the most persistent form of architecture.”
— Joseph Brodsky

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Speaking of...

Raking muck

Jessica Mitford’s ends and frenemies

Crusading ink

When to hoist the black flag 🏴

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Stop the presses and start the pushes for GWQ No. 128! Headline writers needn’t be faceless here: Orange is the new snack was Adam McDowell, and Steve Meurice specifically ordered up coverage of southeast Asia to deploy that Thai pun. The title Get Wit Quick was actually borrowed from this NPR headline about my book Elements of Wit: Mastering The Art of Being Interesting. Heartless readers may recall the tabloid classic “Headless body in topless bar,” but you clearly have a ❤️ and can tap it below.