The ‘curiosity gap’ headline is dead

I wanted to title this article something like “The most common type of news headline is dying. You’ll never guess what killed it.”

But I couldn’t, because this format for trying to draw people in to online articles has officially jumped the shark. Cause of death: suffocation by its own ubiquity.

Like the dab, the Harlem Shake and Facebook before it, the curiosity gap headline couldn’t survive the flood of well-meaning but ultimately ham-handed elders who couldn’t help themselves.

Once the journalism establishment caught wind that people seem to be more enticed to click on articles with headlines that leave something to the imagination, news editors rushed in with a fury.

Marketers, too, added this to the basic playbook.

I’ve seen headlines asking me to guess how many stories tall a new suburban school will be and how many credit cards a petty thief stole.

And I’ve come across far too many examples of headlines tortured past sensibility to try to fit the style.

Let’s stop short of a blanket ban on curiosity gap headlines. There’s a fine line between one that’s done well and one that’s over the top. It takes skill to craft a headline that draws people in without giving away too much.

But the articles that I’m seeing widely shared today have a new commonality: a straight-forward factual headline. Readers are fatigued from the constant guessing game and aren’t willing to play anymore. The clickbait teasing has only further eroded an already waning trust in the mainstream media.

It’s time for headlines to once again actually tell the story.