This illustrates the business model NYT is pursuing. The NYT simply cannot put out an article with a headline like that. They would lose subscribers. People who subscribe to the NYT expect a higher level of discourse than "Target knows you're pregnant". Interestingly, Forbes pursues a dual strategy. I doubt they would publish a title like that in their magazine. On the web though, they might as well be The New York Post.
How Forbes Stole a New York Times Article and Got All The Traffic
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Re: How Forbes Stole a New York Times Article and Got All The Traffic
#12This illustrates the business model NYT is pursuing. The NYT simply cannot put out an article with a headline like that. They would lose subscribers. People who subscribe to the NYT expect a higher level of discourse than "Target knows you're pregnant". Interestingly, Forbes pursues a dual strategy. I doubt they would publish a title like that in their magazine. On the web though, they might as well be The New York P…
The Daily Mail (UK) has a similar approach. Their site is the most popular newspaper site globally and while it shares content with its print edition, the site focuses hard on mass market and celebrity stories. The print edition, on the other hand, is IMHO mostly "immigrants are evil" and Fox News-style scaremongering that its retired, middle Englander audience relishes.
Re: How Forbes Stole a New York Times Article and Got All The Traffic
#13One of my Philosophy professors was extremely adamant about paper titles as he argued that a paper will be read only if it has a clever or thought provoking title. After each assignment we critically reviewed all class paper titles while he provided feedback.
Re: How Forbes Stole a New York Times Article and Got All The Traffic
#14It's definitely relevant here on HN -- a good article with a bad title probably won't go anywhere. A good article with a great title will stay on the front page for hours.
You left out the worst part; a hyperbolic title will stay on the front page for day or two.
Re: How Forbes Stole a New York Times Article and Got All The Traffic
#15Are Forbes writers paid per post/traffic like Gawker writers are? I can only imagine this is the incentive that lead to this kind of crap.
Re: How Forbes Stole a New York Times Article and Got All The Traffic
#16This illustrates the business model NYT is pursuing. The NYT simply cannot put out an article with a headline like that. They would lose subscribers. People who subscribe to the NYT expect a higher level of discourse than "Target knows you're pregnant". Interestingly, Forbes pursues a dual strategy. I doubt they would publish a title like that in their magazine. On the web though, they might as well be The New York P…
The Daily Mail (UK) has a similar approach. Their site is the most popular newspaper site globally and while it shares content with its print edition, the site focuses hard on mass market and celebrity stories. The print edition, on the other hand, is IMHO mostly "immigrants are evil" and Fox News-style scaremongering that its retired, middle Englander audience relishes.
The Guardian is almost as bad. When I loaded their page just now, the top story in the sidebar was also celebrity news:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/fashion/2012/feb/19/stella-mccartn...
I think it's clear this kind of "news" plays across all age groups and classes, not simply "middle Englanders." Even wealthy elites have their forms of lowbrow entertainment. If the goal is to get readers to click on ads, scantily-clad women work wonders.
Re: How Forbes Stole a New York Times Article and Got All The Traffic
#17The title was better for Forbes, but the article length was more relevant I think. Forbes article was two short pages while the NY Times was 7 long pages. I have half a dozen long NY Times articles bookmarked to read later. I don't know if I'll ever get around to it.
Thinking about it - in last couple of months I've done this with every long article I've come across. My Instapaper has a week of reading.
Re: How Forbes Stole a New York Times Article and Got All The Traffic
#18Here's why the Forbes blog post worked: it was short and to the (most interesting) point.
I'm sure Duhigg (the author of the NYT piece) would agree that most neuropsychology research largely shows that readers' attention spans are short and easily influenced by the first few grafs of a story.
In fact, any HN user probably has seen the phenomenon where link-bait-titled stories get hugely upvoted despite the actual body text lacking adequate corroboration.
What the NYT should do next time is have one of its army of prominent site bloggers recap the interesting facets of the story. It's a testament to Duhigg's work that there are many pieces of it that by themselves could make for captivating posts. It's up to the NYT to capitalize on it.
Re: How Forbes Stole a New York Times Article and Got All The Traffic
#19It's definitely relevant here on HN -- a good article with a bad title probably won't go anywhere. A good article with a great title will stay on the front page for hours.
That's the main downside to HN's "don't rename the article" policy I think; it keeps people from editorializing the submissions, but favors submissions from publications that already chose more linkbaity titles to begin with.
Also perhaps a downside of not having Slashdot-style summaries, in that it encourages blogspam. If I find an interesting academic paper that I think HN might like, just submitting it by itself rarely goes anywhere, because there isn't space to explain why I think it's of interest to HN. Oddly enough it actually stands a better chance on Reddit, because you have about one sentence worth of space in the submission title to explain it. On HN, it's better if you reblog the paper with a one- or two-paragraph blurb, catchy title, and then submit that instead of the original paper. People will then complain that you submitted blogspam instead of the original, but most of the time they'll upvote it more than they would've upvoted the original despite the complaints.
Re: How Forbes Stole a New York Times Article and Got All The Traffic
#20Can 600k page views really make a writers career? Is that how they measure success in online writing?
Hasn't pageviews, online or print, always been the metric by which writers have been held to? I'm sure even the best journalists are pushed to write about stories their editors think people want to read. At the end of the day, the number of views/eyeballs you get, the more you can charge for advertising and the longer your business stays afloat.