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Investigating how the New York Times A/B tests their headlines

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Re: Investigating how the New York Times A/B tests their headlines

#51

Post by adolph »

selestify wrote: post #41
1stcity3rdcoast wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have journalists ever controlled or written their own headlines? I don't think this is a change from any point in newspaper history.

Why has it been historically separated like this?

The latency of decision cycle was too great in previous times. Even within digital workflows the length of time between knowledge of final space available on the physical page and when that space had to be filled with text was too short to haggle with a writer. It had to be performed by a smaller set of people right next to the people laying the type of not the people laying the type.

Re: Investigating how the New York Times A/B tests their headlines

#52

Post by mxcrossr »

JasonFruit wrote: post #6

Should a news source be optimizing for engagement, or for accuracy in communicating facts? I understand it's a business, but it's analogous to a bakery that labels all its goods as its best-selling items, only to confuse and disappoint the buyer when they open the box and find something different inside. It may sell that product that time, but it goes against the purpose of the organization as a whole, and doesn't se…

If people don’t like click bait I recommend not using news aggregators that only show the headline and are curated based on the votes of users who don’t read the articles!

Re: Investigating how the New York Times A/B tests their headlines

#53

Post by nkozyra »

1stcity3rdcoast wrote: post #40
nkozyra wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Headlines have become advertisements. They're almost never written by the journalists who wrote the story, they're written for space constraints that change on a whim ... They're very rarely "accurate" the way stories are intended to be for these reasons.

Have journalists ever controlled or written their own headlines? I don't think this is a change from any point in newspaper history.

I wasn't suggesting that journalists wrote their own headlines, although for smaller publications it was more likely to be the case. I worked at a newspaper in a 50k city and journalists gave suggestions with their copy.

My point, rather, was that headlines slip past the journalistic barriers applied to copy. Often the people on the desk are making a headline fit at 11:45 pm or later and have no real oversight.

Re: Investigating how the New York Times A/B tests their headlines

#55

Post by nkozyra »

selestify wrote: post #41
1stcity3rdcoast wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have journalists ever controlled or written their own headlines? I don't think this is a change from any point in newspaper history.

Why has it been historically separated like this?

The story is worked on throughout the day/week. It goes through a number of copy editors and revisions. Its final publication date might be in limbo.

It's chosen for Wednesday in the budget meeting. It's 1A material. A cursory headline is written. Then a big news event happens: now it's 2A material. That means less space. The copy needs to be cut, the headline needs to be one line shorter, etc. This happens at, say, 9 pm and the journalist and editor in chief have been at home for hours.

Re: Investigating how the New York Times A/B tests their headlines

#56

Post by LanceH »

lupire wrote: post #43
selestify wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why has it been historically separated like this?

Because the headline isn't part of the story, it's part of the index/ToC of the whole paper, so it's written by the staff that put the whole paper together.

Which is to say, it's always been click bait.

Re: Investigating how the New York Times A/B tests their headlines

#57

Post by NetOpWibby »

JasonFruit wrote: post #6

Should a news source be optimizing for engagement, or for accuracy in communicating facts? I understand it's a business, but it's analogous to a bakery that labels all its goods as its best-selling items, only to confuse and disappoint the buyer when they open the box and find something different inside. It may sell that product that time, but it goes against the purpose of the organization as a whole, and doesn't se…

This is why I’m letting my NYT subscription expire. I see no difference between them and tabloids.

Sensationalist junk.

Re: Investigating how the New York Times A/B tests their headlines

#58

Post by jordan_curve »

monch1962 wrote: post #50
JasonFruit wrote: post #6

Should a news source be optimizing for engagement, or for accuracy in communicating facts? I understand it's a business, but it's analogous to a bakery that labels all its goods as its best-selling items, only to confuse and disappoint the buyer when they open the box and find something different inside. It may sell that product that time, but it goes against the purpose of the organization as a whole, and doesn't se…

It _usually_ makes sense to optimise for engagement, particularly in the US where there's no state-funded media outlet (cue discussion about socialism that will be ignored). The UK has the BBC, Australia has the ABC, and both are state funded media outlets that aren't (at least overtly) driven by views. I'm sure their funding largely depends on how many people are consuming their product, but it's not as though some…

There’s absolutely state-funded media in the U.S. It just doesn’t encompass as much as those in the UK or Australia.

C-Span is a good example.

Re: Investigating how the New York Times A/B tests their headlines

#59

Post by rosstex »

awhitby wrote: post #30

This is interesting but unless I missed it the author doesn't really explain why they believe they observe all A/B tests. They kind of assume that the randomization is over time (so every reader within a window sees the same headline, and then it changes) rather than within cohorts at a fixed time. But the quote included suggests the NYT does do the latter: "Half of readers will see one headline, and the other half w…

+1, they didn't explain that at all.

Re: Investigating how the New York Times A/B tests their headlines

#60

Post by exikyut »

ftio wrote: post #3

If you're interested in observing this in realtime, there's a great Twitter account called @nyt_diff[0] that automatically posts when headlines on the front page change. Really cool to watch articles get updated as stories evolve. It's particularly interesting to witness headline writers grapple with how and how much to editorialize. [0] https://twitter.com/nyt_diff

Agh, this is using a horribly noisy diffing algorithm.

With quite a few of the posts I'd just present them side by side, with the differences highlighted.

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