Should Internet Articles Have Headlines?

Why do articles have headlines? It’s a historical legacy, says John Herrman:

“If your primary mode of story discovery is to look at a newspaper frontpage, you need headlines to tell you where to go.”

But as content discovery on the Internet happens more and more via social media, are article headlines still relevant? After all, as Jonah Peretti points out:

“What do people add to a story when they share it? In some cases it’s better than the headline that our team wrote and in some cases shows why content matters to them.”

In this new social media driving traffic world, Herrman says that article headlines can even be a source of confusion!

“To click on “RIP Headlines,” a headline, and arrive at a page that has another headline, along the lines of “Why We Don’t Need Headlines,” is something we’re very used to doing. But it should feel like a form of deceit. It tells a reader, though you might not receive it this way, that the headline you were initially interested in isn’t as good at the original headline.”

And so, says Herrman: Out with the headline, in with:

“what’s known as a dek — a simple description that both confirms the remote headline and adds to it. A boldfaced introduction, in other words, that flows seamlessly into the first sentence.”

Herrman acknowledges that authors of articles may not be thrilled at the prospect of removing headlines:

“From a writer’s perspective, maintaining your own authoritative headline may be a way to assert your taste, or message, over the tastes and messages of the thousands of people sharing or aggregating your story, photo or video.”

But would writers just be fighting a lost cause? After all:

“The headline that’s most successful on Facebook or Twitter, or in a link from another site, is that story’s headline *by default.*”

I know, I know: this blog has a headline too. But who knows? Maybe headlines will go the dinosaur way sooner than we think.