We all know that most of the time, the journalist who writes an article rarely writes its headline. Now sometimes the headline can differ from a story because the sub didn’t really understand the piece. Sometimes it can be downright misleading.
But how about this from journalism.co.uk? The article is about Ricky Gervais’ decision to charge for his record-breaking podcast. Now look at the RSS feed details
Gervais smells the money and abandons Guardian
“I was a fool” to give record-breaking podcast away for free, says British comedian.
I don’t think he says that anywhere in the article. How worrying, given that’s quite an explosive quote if it’s true.
So it looks like there’s something else web subs are going to have to pay attention to in future.
Ricky Gervais actually said he was a fool for doing it for free in one of his podcasts for the Guardian. It was a joke…
http://www.rickygervais.com/karlisacult.php
And the quote was in a standfirst not a headline.
A few things:
Must have missed that. Would have been quite useful context for the piece though, don’t you think? Isn’t that one of the golden rules of writing headlines, standfirsts and articles: if it’s not clear, explain later?
I don’t think it qualifies as a standfirst, because a standfirst is supposed to appear on the same page as the article: it “stands first”. It’s more a contents page intro in this context.