A Terrible Title for a Very Important News Item

LittleSoldier · #1 Feb 8, '11, 5:18 pm

It's my understanding that threads re news items need to have the same title as the title of the news story. I can understand that. But last night I started a thread and as of right now, it has zero replies.

Why? Because the news story has a horrible title. The title only indicates that an Archdiocese wants to provide burial services for aborted children. Boring to most people (unfortunately).

But what is really going on is that an abortion "doctor" did late-term abortions, then murdered the babies who were born alive. Then he stored them in jars and a freezer.

If I could have used some of that information in the thread title, not only would people have responded, but more people would know about what is going on.

This is very frustrating to me. This is news that everyone should know about. But because a newspaper (actually two) used an awful title, I'm stuck with using it too. That doesn't seem fair and it limits accessibility to news items that are interesting and important.

I think we should be able to use any titles we want. I would have used the title: "Abortionist murders live babies; keeps their corpses in bottles and freezer" or something like that.

Can this rule be changed? Am I completely wrong about how we must report news items?

AdriannaJean · #2 Feb 8, '11, 5:23 pm

I would agree...though I am not a moderator so cannot give any real advice

LittleSoldier · #3 Feb 8, '11, 5:40 pm

Quote:

Originally Posted by AdriannaJean

I would agree...though I am not a moderator so cannot give any real advice

Hey, thank you. I appreciate that you saw my post and responded.

**Dale_M** · #4 Feb 8, '11, 6:31 pm

LittleSoldierr, yes, sometimes a headline is vague or insufficiently descriptive. And since in the News forums we are required to use the headline as our thread title, the results can be very disappointing.

In such cases, what I do is to use the headline but also add words in brackets which will clarify or amplify its meaning. For example:

Teens on frontline in war on terror [in Somalia]

or

[Presbyterian] Church [USA] rebukes minister for same-sex weddings

LittleSoldier · #5 Feb 8, '11, 9:02 pm

Quote:

Originally Posted by Dale_M

LittleSoldierr, yes, sometimes a headline is vague or insufficiently descriptive. And since in the News forums we are required to use the headline as our thread title, the results can be very disappointing.

In such cases, what I do is to use the headline but also add words in brackets which will clarify or amplify its meaning. For example:

Teens on frontline in war on terror [in Somalia]

or

[Presbyterian] Church [USA] rebukes minister for same-sex weddings

Thank you. I started another thread before reading your post. I changed the title. It's in the Social Justice forum but the OP of another thread in the World News forums already had a thread going (and I know her) so I guess I should have checked there, too. I'm not used to presenting news stories.

I like your idea and will use it in the future. I should also remember that I live on the west coast of the US and somebody in a different time zone will probably already have started a thread on a story as horrific as this one.

agatha012 · #6 Feb 12, '11, 1:31 am

well thats great buddy.. And i like your idea that you get from this thread.

Digitonomy · #7 Feb 22, '11, 5:34 pm

Another option would be to find another news source that has a title that is relevant to your thread topic - usually there are multiple sources reporting the same basic story.

One thing that used to occur in the news forums was that posters would come up with inflammatory and misleading titles for news articles. Along the lines of "Warmonger Bush Lies Again" when the source was a standard story about a news conference. Another thing that sometimes occurred was that several different threads would be running at the same time about the same article, but it was not immediately obvious because the titles were so different. I would direct you to the archived Politics 2004 forum to see for yourself, but it appears to have been censored. Anyway, I would argue that these two disadvantages are good reasons to keep the current rule in place. However, it's not clear if one or the other or both were why the staff instituted the rule, so perhaps they'll be open to your suggestion.

3DOCTORS · #8 Feb 23, '11, 1:21 pm

Quote:

Originally Posted by Digitonomy

Another option would be to find another news source that has a title that is relevant to your thread topic - usually there are multiple sources reporting the same basic story.

One thing that used to occur in the news forums was that posters would come up with inflammatory and misleading titles for news articles. Along the lines of "Warmonger Bush Lies Again" when the source was a standard story about a news conference. Another thing that sometimes occurred was that several different threads would be running at the same time about the same article, but it was not immediately obvious because the titles were so different. I would direct you to the archived Politics 2004 forum to see for yourself, but it appears to have been censored. Anyway, I would argue that these two disadvantages are good reasons to keep the current rule in place. However, it's not clear if one or the other or both were why the staff instituted the rule, so perhaps they'll be open to your suggestion.

There have also been some about delicate matters (an example would be the sex scandals, but by no means limited to that topic) that are open to bizarre misinterpretations or just sound plain creepy with their original titles. I can't think of any off the top of my head but I definitely recall having this "WHAAaaaaat?!" reaction.

I like the idea of the brackets if Admin is OK with that - although I am not usually the one who posts news articles; I usually see the ones posted by others and go "Huh?"