How Vox Writes 2 Headlines

Article Headline
ThirdLove controversy: Bra company employees allege bullying by male CEO David Spector

Page Headline
ThirdLove says it’s by women, for women. But women who’ve worked there disagree.

Tweet
ThirdLove’s public face is its female co-founders. But employees allege bullying from the company’s male co-CEO.

Business Insider continues to play the headline game superbly!

Article Headline
Why Microsoft paid untold millions to bring the world’s most well-known gamer, Ninja, to its own streaming platform

Page Headline
Why Microsoft’s exclusivity deal with Ninja was a brilliant move

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Addendum (10/27/2019):

Same with Vox:

Article Headline
Trump’s Baghdadi press conference shows how he ruins even his best moments

Page Headline
ISIS leader Baghdadi’s death: Trump’s 5 most stunning remarks

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Addendum (10/28/2019):

And New York:

Article Headline
The Zombie Campaign: Joe Biden is the least formidable front-runner ever. Will it matter?

Page Headline
Inside Joe Biden’s 2020 Presidential Campaign

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Addendum (11/3/2019):

Slate, too!

Article Headline
Let’s All Stop Mindlessly Clicking and Sharing Zombie Links

Page Headline
Deadspin firings and what you can do to fight bad content.

Does Vox Practice What It Preaches?

You decide. Here’s how the company’s CEO depicts its modus operandi:

“Vox Media has never chased algorithms for traffic and we never will. We operate on the belief that the best digital distribution platforms tune their services over time to reward the best and most relevant content from strong media brands. We’ve seen the roadkill of companies that gamed the system—achieving fleeting scale over long-term sustainability. Of course optimization and experimentation are critical, and is part of what makes us a truly modern digital media company, but we remain firmly committed to the promise that our editorial will always be data informed, never data driven. We know that quality ranks highest, and that substance is viral.”

Vox Writes 2 Headlines for Every Big Article

Home Page	Article Page
Marijuana could treat these six health problems	Six health problems marijuana could treat better than traditional medicine
How America makes life extra hard on moms	If America really valued mothers, we wouldn’t treat them like this

Related: Slate Publishes 4 Headlines for Each Article

Ezra Explained His Vox Venture 3 Years Ago

“If I edited a major publication—or even a medium-size one—I would begin each major legislative battle by detailing a few of my smartest, clearest writers to create a hyperlinked, fairly comprehensive, summary of the basic legislation. That summary would be updated throughout the process, and it would be linked in every single story written on the topic. As reader questions came in, and points of confusion arose, it would be expanded, so by the end, you’d have a document that was current, comprehensive, navigable and responsive to the questions people actually had about the legislation. Telling people what just happened is undeniably important, but given that most people aren’t following that closely, we in the media need to do a better job of telling people what’s been happening.”

—Ezra (via Felix)