Headlines

In our increasingly digital age we all know how important good headlines are to a story. The headline is the deciding factor of whether or not your story is one of the precious few that gets the nod from this generations compulsive clickers.

After completing this week's exercises, I realized that writing a good headline, especially with space constrictions like we had in our writing headlines exercise, can be considerably more difficult than I had originally anticipated.

The Heds:

• Mizzou protesters, Black Lives Matter complain Paris attacks stole their headlines
• Another story that was in the headlines this past week took place at the University of Missouri - where long simmering racial tension at the university finally boiled over - seeing the university's president resign over threats from the football team that they wouldn't play until there was a change made. I am all for racial equality and have been following this story, but this headline just felt lazy to me. Comparing a worldwide tragedy where hundreds of lives have either been lost and seriously injured to racial protests at one American university seems short sighted. Just my opinion. 

• Cop pulls over Google self-driving car, finds no driver to ticket
• I laughed out loud when I read this headline. These are the types of headlines that I have to read strictly because of the humor and irony of the story topic. I don't want to say that headlines for stories like this write themselves, but the topic makes the headline seem pretty easy to write.