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Tailoring journalism for Google users

Posted by Martin Stabe on 10 April 2006 at 12:24
Tags: Associated Press, BBC, Google, Journalism, Online, United States, Yahoo

Subeditors are increasingly tailoring headlines to attract visitors from search engines to their web sites, the New York Times reported yesterday.
Because search engines deliver a huge amount of traffic — and thus advertising reveune — to their web sites, news organisations are experimenting with search engine optimisation, or SEO.

The result is that heads online are often terse, literal versions of the headlines that appear on the printed page. Forget about puns or witty allusions to high or pop culture: Attracting the bots that feed content to search engines places a premium on using key words and basic facts explaining what the story is about. And brevity: The Associated Press now limits its headlines to 40 characters.

“There are no algorithms for wit, irony, humor or stylish writing,” notes Steve Lohr in the New York Times story.

This is not just an American phenomenon. Lohr quotes BBC News Online’s Nic Newman to illustrate how the Beeb’s web site uses two seperate headlines — one to attract search engines and one to be more appealing to human readers.
But pandering to Google could go far beyond just headlines, Lohr’s report says:

Journalists, [search experts] say, would be wise to do a little keyword research to determine the two or three most-searched words that relate to their subject — and then include them in the first few sentences. “That’s not something they teach in journalism schools,” said Danny Sullivan, editor of SearchEngineWatch, an online newsletter. “But in the future, they should.”

Before journalists begin wringing their hands about the technologically-determined death of style, the New York Times story makes an important point: Many of the current conventions of news writing originate with the cost of transmitting stories by telegraph.

Related:

• Google News is like a newstand
• Editor bans puns from headlines
• Google Video in copyright suit
• Yahoo hires signal more news production

Tags: Associated Press, BBC, Google, Journalism, Online, United States, Yahoo

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1. Paul Smith |  10 April 2006 at 1:56pm

   There are so many things to say. It’s a bit choppy but you’ll get the picture.

   This is a collaboration of rants from people who worked under Paul Field and Paul
   Henderson.

   It was obvious from Day 1 that Field and Henderson favored the ex-pats while they headed the National Enquirer.

   They both ran the paper during their short tenure like a London daily instead of a American weekly tabloid.

   During the one period Field was editor of the National Enquirer, circulation fell by 250,000 issues a week.

   Henderson’s news ‘expertise’ in the UK didn’t mean a thing in the United States. He had reporters chasing stories that the National Enquirer reader would’ve never been interested in.

   They didn’t know the market and they refused to learn anything about it.

   Paul Field and Paul Henderson were the worst editors in National Enquirer history. The word ‘editor’ is used loosely because neither one of these bumbling fools could’ve made it in the old regime.

   Paul Field, we called him ‘hoops’ or ‘Harry Potter’ the man who owns one gray suit and wears it proudly most every day.
   One of the biggest liars we’ve ever met in this business. His incompetence is only superseded by his arrogance.
   He came into the organization and acted like the perfect ‘ugly American.’ He completely changed the Enquirer for the worse. His new ‘Q’ section was a joke, he spent months coming up with and tooling with this brilliant section. How did he come up with the name ‘Q’? Brilliant.
   It was a piece of crap, thank the good lord not many people read it.
   Then he chose Anna Nicole Smith as a columnist.
   Did he know our good readers loathe her?

   Harry Potter constantly ignored reader’s email asking to bring back the stories and the style of the old NE.

   Why?
   Because Harry Potter knew more than our reader, he knew what was best for the reader.

   One journo remembers meeting him and one of the first things he said
   ‘I’ll never do a special or celebrity round up—like celebrity flaws, who’s gay who’s not, etc. That’s below my style of journalism.’

   Coincidently after only a few months in power after weekly circulation started it’s tumble, he brought back the celebrity roundups; and they were some of his best selling issues.

   He then asked another journo some illegal questions, like who is married and has children?
   Illegal in the US.

   Look at the numbers within a few weeks of taking over his weekly sales plummeted by almost 150,000 and they’ve been going downhill ever since.

   The one thing we are all looking forward to is not ever seeing the phrase, ‘The National Enquirer can reveal.’
   Hey genius, in American the word reveal is somewhat implied by actually publishing the article. Why do you need to tell the reader you are revealing something, can’t they figure it out for themselves?

   Gone are the phrases: ‘hit out, can reveal,’ etc.
   Bye bye to the constant typos and misspelled words, Field was a terrible editor.

   One picture Field ran, captioned TV Regis Philbin with his bodyguard, the bodyguard was actually his doorman dressed in his work clothing, brilliant.

   Harry Potter you almost accomplished something George Clooney and other celebs have tried to do in the past—put us out of business.

   The greatest thing was to hear just hours before you were sacked, you were hoisting a pint in celebration of your first year.

   We heard your sacking was quite a surprise. I’m sure you left the company with some money, but you will always be known as a failure and that tag will follow your skinny arrogant ass wherever you go.

   When it was announced that you were fired, we were all on cloud nine.

   You can’t believe how happy we all were, it was a breath air.
   Your firing gave us hope, that we can restore the Enquirer to the glory it had before you messed it up.

   Attention to all potential employers of Paul Field, he is an excellent candidate for an editor position if you want to dramatically decrease you sales.
   In the last six months of 2005 his weekly sales plummeted by almost 25%. Brilliant.

   Field lost control and respect from the ‘office.’ A few months ago, his assistant sent out an email from Field asking all employees to send her a list of the days they took as vacation and sick leave during the previous year.

   You really think all of the employees were honest and gave her the correct number of day taken?

   And Harry your arrogance, how dare you.

   You came into our country surround yourself with Brits and think that you can master our culture?

   That would be same thing, if one of us were hired as an editor of a London tab and surrounded myself with Americans. Do you think with our limited knowledge about your culture we could master your culture? I think not.

   Harry, go back and read the quotes you gave to various papers about British reporters. ‘They don’t come back, if they don’t get the story’ or ‘we only send them out with a one-way ticket.’

   We hope you have a roundtrip ticket because I can’t wait until you get the hell out of my country.

   We heard you were a stunts editor before you came to the NE. So go back and start a campaign to squirt Tom Cruise, or save the mouse in the British National Mus. Etc.

   Field’s arrogance can only be compared to a really ugly girl who thinks she’s hot.
   Field thinks his brilliant and his not.

   Paul Henderson, aka ‘Hendo’ Master of the Obvious, Sgt Schultz, Mr. Magoo.
   The dumbest bastard some of us have ever meet in this business, arrogant but superseded by incompetence.

   You didn’t care about the NE; you only cared about receiving your paycheck and taking holidays and looking up for houses to buy in Florida.

   One of your fellow Brits told me the other day; Paul Field couldn’t have chosen a worse person in England for the job as Henderson.
   Even his fellow Brits thought he was a retard.
   Editors were happy when he was on one of his many ‘holidays.’
   He came to the NE to not make it better but to take a long vacation in America.

   The only story he really ever edited was a Cameron Diaz story. His brilliance got several British tabs and the NE sued by her.

   Good job, Mr. Magoo.

   Another time Hendo wanted to see the leaves in upstate NY. So he took a Monday off of work to take the misses to the countryside.

   He pawned his work off on others; we still don’t know what he really did at the NE.

   To tell you the truth we were jealous, we want to make the money he did and take as many ‘holidays’ and have the same work ethic as Master of the Obvious.

   And by the way when you got mugged walking home? That’s sounds a bit fishy. Are you sure you weren’t cruising the park a la Kevin Spacey? We could be wrong about that.

   Hendo everyone cheered when you got fired.

   Hendo you have no clue about America, you don’t know the difference between Iowa and Idaho, let alone any celeb.

   You had to constantly ask people over and over about certain celebs. Don’t you think that you should’ve have given it a bit more effort in knowing our celebs.

   Your favoritism you had for you ex-pats was appalling; you paid them more than the American’s.

   If there is any rift between the Brits and Americans it was because of Paul Field and Henderson. They paid the Brit stringers up to $500/day and only paid the Americans $150/day. Their rationalization, the Brit stringers can do the story in less time.

   It sad because of your and Harry Potter’s failure several of your ex-pats are getting let go.
   They only have you two to blame.

   We met a lot of nice people that unfortunately have been let go, because of Hendo and Harry’s failure.

   To all of the British employees that have been let go, you can thank Harry Potter and Master of the Obvious.

   We are all soooo happy you’re both gone.

   Bye bye.

   PS if Hendo goes out for drinks with you, make sure he doesn’t go the toilet as the bill arrives. We’ve heard he’s famous for this stunt.

   Maybe that could be something the former stunts editor could pull.

   For all of you atheist out there, there is a God. We all prayed long and hard for the firing of Harry Potter and Master of the Obvious and our prayers were answered.

   -30-

2. blue dot |  15 August 2006 at 4:47pm

   amen to that! these clowns were the worst thing ever and have damaged the paper beyond belief. i don’t expect it will ever recover. look at an issue and tell me what is original anymore. it’s all rehash crap. who needs to buy the tabs when we can read or view the original stories in the MSM. rip, tabloids. you used to do good in the oj simpson days. tis a pity.

3. Martin Stabe » The &hellip |  17 January 2007 at 2:19pm

   [...] Times Online isn’t the only site doing this, by the way. [...]

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