If you want people to read your story, you have to draw them in with an attention-grabbing headline. Often, viewers decide whether a story is worth reading within seconds of seeing the headline. Creating great headlines is a difficult task, but it’s one of the most important skills for a journalist to develop.
A good headline communicates a single idea, even though the news article that follows usually contains much more information. It also helps search engines match stories with readers. In digital media, it can be particularly challenging because headlines are shortened in search engine results and in the email inboxes of mobile readers. This makes it more challenging to get the right mix of keyphrase prominence and reader empathy, but it’s still essential to success.
NPR’s journalists have a wide range of approaches to writing headlines, depending on their style and the types of stories they cover. Some are more conversational and others more geared towards a specific audience, such as blog headlines or ad headlines.
For example, the headline “Army to allow yoga in public schools” could be a more casual approach, while something like “The Boy Who Brought Bananas” has a clearer goal of making the audience laugh. The best headlines are elegant, but they’re not clunky. The use of trigrams (groups of three words) correlates with social engagement, according to a study by Buzzsumo.
NPR’s reporters often start thinking about headlines as soon as they pitch a story. Planet Money host Alexi Horowitz-Ghazi, who often has to write headlines for her own stories, says she writes up 40 to 50 possible headlines before she chooses one. She and other members of her team then discuss the nuances of each headline with an editor or a marketer to make sure it’s optimal for a given location.
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