In the hard hitting world of online journalism, titles are everything.
Feb. 16th - 14-year old Chinese boy dies due to a chair malfunction.
Feb. 18th, 10am EST- Itai News, apparently a newsblog affiliated with 2-ch, reports the story.
Feb. 20th, 4am EST - Sankaku Complex [NSFW] posts the story with its new title - Chair Kills Boy by Anal Penetration.
Feb. 20th, 8pm EST - Story explodes.
Online stories have to be memetic to get attention. A humorous title, often all that is visible in a packed RSS feed, almost replaces the lede for drawing viewers in. The assigned Slate article approaches this a little; the devaluation of information means it has to be interesting to compete. Stories are targeted not so much as "direct-to-consumer PR packages" but as would-be viral phenomenons. For niche news websites, this means limitless leeway in titles, for major news sites like CNN, this means running the racy.
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That's an interesting observation! I've noticed the same thing with news stories online. I think that this is especially true with "less newsy" sites, such as Yahoo or MSN. These headlines often seem to be real juicy and attractive sounding in order to lure the readers to reading the full story, a lot like teasers on television news.
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