The philosophy of news subscripting: before writing, think for three seconds

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I have long heard some journalist friends complain about the fact that various media outlets are actively investing in real-time news in order to chase traffic. However, I happened to see a certain [real-time news] (https://www.appledaily.com.tw/realtimenews/article/local/20160129/786488) from Apple Daily before, which made me feel like I was confused. After reading it several times, I still felt strange.

The headline of this news read “Penghu Air Crash Fortunately Survived, Military Couple Ruined Their Future” The “Penghu Air Crash” mentioned above must still be fresh in everyone’s memory, but what happened to the military couple mentioned later? How can it be said that it “ruined their future”? After reading the text carefully, I realized that this military couple did not do anything, but…

…The two of them failed the physical examination after the plane crash and were relegated from promising air service jobs to logistics jobs. In addition to feeling physical discomfort, the two of them were mentally unable to escape the shadow of the crash. Their minds were deeply affected, and they were worried about whether their future military career development had come to an end.

It turns out that I was misled by the title and thought that this couple had “destroyed their own future” or “destroyed their own Great Wall”? Did you think too much when editing a title like this? It seems that it is easy for readers to have wrong associations. If it must be written like this, the word “but” should be replaced. For example, it may be more fluent to use “ruined future” instead.

Title Killing is certainly undesirable, but sensationalism is actually unnecessary. In this era where “traffic is king”, I can certainly understand that everyone is trying their best to win eyeballs, but you really have to think about it before placing a bid!

★ This article was originally published in Vista

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Further reading

• The art of subscripting eye-catching copywriting: start by setting the main topic and creating a sense of picture

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