Find one (1) headline that you came across recently and thought it was great. Explain why it resonated with you. Please ensure that you base your answers on topics discussed in class. (6 Marks)
The headline that I came across recently and thought it was great was “Three people charged after man found in ditch beaten and unconscious.”
When looking at headlines for this assignment, there were many headlines displayed but this one caught my attention the most. I came across this headline on Windsor. ctv and I thought it was great because of many reasons.
One reason why I thought it was good is because of emotional words such as “beaten” and “unconscious.” Without knowing or having any sort of personal relationship with the person the article is about, simply glancing at the headline made me feel bad. “Beaten” and “unconscious” are two words that are powerful because they mean that in the context of this headline, the person is heavily injured. With this in mind, I think that this article resonated with me because it made me feel emotional about that person that I didn’t know and made me want to read the article to see how that person ended up in that accident
Secondly, another reason why this article resonated with me is because it wasn’t clickbait. After reading the actual article, I found the article’s intentions were not to waste my time as a reader. The words “beaten” and “unconscious” were used not to only just grab my attention for clicks but to inform me as a reader about what the article is about. As a result of this, as a reader, I feel like that author cares about my time and I am more inclined to share this article with others.
Thirdly, another reason why I think I resonated with this article is because it displayed data in the headline. In the case of this headline, the data here is “Three.” As discussed in class, including stats, numbers, and data in your headlines is effective because it gives readers expectations on what they’re reading and gives a sense of wonder about the article. I think this is true because as I was looking at the headline, knowing that three people were heavily injured piqued my curiosity. I think that the article wouldn’t be as effective for me if it refrained from putting Three or less in the headline itself. I think this because seeing “Three” in the headline made me feel a sense of urgency which wouldn’t by having “one” or “two” wouldn’t have to the same extent.
Fourthly, the first three words are effective for a headline which caught my attention and encouraged further reading of the headline and article. As discussed in class, an effective technique for crafting good headlines is the choice of the first three words in a headline because they’re the first pieces of the headline the user will see when they scan. In this case, this headline, I think it resonated with me because the first words I saw when glancing at articles on Windsor. ctv was “Three Charged after.” I think these three words resonated with me because they made me curious about what caused those Three to be charged.
Finally, a reason why the headline resonated with me is that it went straight to the point. While not rev leaving all of the specific details, I already know the general gist of the article itself. The reason why I think this point resonated with me is because It did not take long to process and understand what was going on in the article as it didn’t add any unnecessary words in the article. I think a contributing factor to this is the word count as well. As discussed in monsterheadline.com, the character limit in this article is 10 which is around the 6-word ideal word count for CTR.
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