Should the Headline Spotlight Your Summary or Your Scoop?

On Friday, the Post published its results of a big investigation. The headline: “FBI’s Search for ‘Mo,’ Suspect in Bomb Threats, Highlights Use of Malware for Surveillance.” That night, Gizmodo summarized the scoop in a short blog post titled, “FBI Can Secretly Turn on Laptop Cameras Without the Indicator Light.”

The differences speak for themselves:

Headline	FBI’s Search for “Mo,” Suspect in Bomb Threats, Highlights Use of Malware for Surveillance	FBI Can Secretly Turn on Laptop Cameras Without the Indicator Light
Publication	The Washington Post	Gizmodo
Authors	2	1
Words	1,987	193
Comments	173	577
Views	*	297,624

* While I wasn’t able to obtain this datum—the Post’s PR team (@WashPostPR) told me, “Unfortunately, we don’t share numbers like that publicly”—we can extrapolate from the comments comparison that it’s less than 300,000.