A headline is the first thing a reader sees and decides whether to invest time reading an article. It’s also what gets a story listed on a site’s homepage or other landing pages — and on social media and Apple News aggregators.
Headlines can be a tricky proposition, though, especially in a world where readers can find content by browsing a long list of search engine results. The best headlines are clear and specific, telling the reader what the article is about and providing a hook that entices them to read more.
Writing headlines is a process that varies for each reporter, but NPR staffers have some general guidelines. Planet Money host Alexi Horowitz-Ghazi, for instance, calls herself one of the “more obsessive headline people.” She often starts thinking about a headline at the beginning of the story pitch and will sometimes come up with 40 to 50 possible headlines for an episode.
The process for headline writing varies depending on how a story is being published, too. For example, if an episode is going to air on All Things Considered, it will get two different headlines. One shows up on the daily rundown that appears on the ATC landing page, while the other will be used for the podcast and a longer digital buildout of the story.
In our experiments, we’ve found that headlines should be short and communicate the most important information about the story. Word length matters, too: shorter headlines — and those that use less common words, such as “job” instead of “occupation” — tend to perform better. Similarly, using pronouns when possible can help a headline be more relatable.