How Slate Writes 3 Headlines

Headline for Humans
You’re Doing It Wrong: Poached Eggs

Headline for Google
Best poached egg recipe: How to get beautiful eggs every time, no special equipment required.

Headline for Twitter
You Should Be Poaching Eggs All the Time

Every Publisher Pays for Traffic

A reminder of media’s dirty big secret:

“Slate was one of several publications that had been paying one such company, the Social Edge, to share its stories via a network of popular celebrity Facebook pages, including George Takei’s. (Slate and some others discontinued the Takei relationship in November 2017 in the wake of a sexual assault claim against him.)”

Slate Is Still Writing 3 Headlines for Big Articles. Yes!

Example #1
Homepage
The One Donald Trump Position That I Half-Agree With

Article Title
Trump Isn’t Entirely Wrong on Trade

Page Title
Trump isn’t entirely wrong on trade. But there’s a better way to help American workers.

Example #2
Addendum (7/10/2016): New York, too:

Homepage
Is This the End of Roger Ailes?

Article Title
Gretchen Carlson’s Sexual-Harassment Lawsuit May Allow Murdoch Sons to Finally Oust Roger Ailes From Fox News

Page Title
Has the Clock Run Out on Roger Ailes?

Example #3
Addendum (1/29/2018): Slate is still going strong!

Article Title
Is That All There Is to a POTUS?

Page Title
The tabloid InTouch offers us a peek at the president’s literal and figurative nakedness.

Tweet
Trump’s sad, pathetic affair with Stormy Daniels will remind you of his sad, pathetic presidency.

Why Doesn't Slate Follow a Standard Format for Its Bylines?

Here are the bylines of four Slate staffers:

1. Amanda Hess is a Slate staff writer. Email her at amanda.hess@slate.com, or follow her on Twitter.

2. David Weigel is a Slate political reporter. You can reach him at daveweigel@gmail.com, or tweet at him @daveweigel.

3. John Dickerson is Slate’s chief political correspondent and author of On Her Trail. Read his series on the presidency and on risk. Follow him on Twitter.

4. Matthew Yglesias is Slate’s business and economics correspondent. He is the author of The Rent Is Too Damn High.

The first part is consistent:

“[Name] is a [Slate’s] [job title].”

But shouldn't the subsequent syntax be standardized? For example, is it,

“You can reach him at [email address].”

or

“Email her at [email address].”

Similarly, is it

“Follow her on Twitter.”

or

“tweet at him @[handle].”

Nitpicky? Yes. Happily, Slate has nitpickers on staff.

A Tale of 2 Articles: How 2 Websites Market the Same Article

	Slate	Business Insider	Winner
Article Title	How Pornhub Milks Its Own Traffic Data	Sex Site Pornhub Has Figured Out A Brilliant Way To Get Free Publicity	Business Insider
Page Title	Pornhub Insights: How a porn site milks its own traffic data for publicity.	Pornhub Milks Its Own Traffic Data	Slate
Tweet	Pornhub Is Milking Its Own Traffic Data for All It’s Worth	Sex Site Pornhub Has Figured Out A Brilliant Way To Get Free Publicity	Business Insider
Facebook	Pornhub Is Milking Its Own Traffic Data for All It’s Worth	N/A	Slate

What do you think?

Related: A Headline Is Worth a Thousand Words

Slate Publishes 4 Headlines for Each Article

Updated (12/2/2013)

Well, not every article or blog post, but most. A couple of examples:

Home Page	Article Title	Page Title	Tweet
Serve Thanksgiving Dinner at 8 PM	Thanksgiving Is Just a Special Dinner Party	What time is Thanksgiving dinner? How about 8?	It’s Thanksgiving Dinner. Stop Eating at Lunchtime.
Everything Is Hackable	Can You Hack It?	Hacking iPhones, Google Glass, and Fitbits: How to protect yourself when everything you own can be hacked.	Everything Electronic You Own — iPhone to Subway Card to Power Strip — Can Be Hacked. So How to Defend Yourself?

Addendum (12/8/2013): For its (big) articles, New York publishes three headlines:

Home Page	Article Title	Page Title
A-Rod Isn’t Looking for Sympathy	Chasing A-Rod	The Epic Battle Between Major League Baseball and Alex Rodriguez

4 Reasons @Slate Is Killing It on Twitter

Twitter CEO, Dick Costolo, is right: the @Slate Twitter account is fantastic. Based on a quick audit, here are four reasons why.

1. Consistency. Their editorial style—one sentence per tweet, with an emphasis on the here and now (“Here is a photo…”; “We turned this map into…”)—is consistent.

2. Self-Promotion. The vast majority of what they tweet—and retweet—links to Slate.com. Indeed, almost all RTs come from subsidiary Slate handles (e.g., @SlateGabfest and @Browbeat) and Slate writers (e.g., @fmkaplan and @mattyglesias).

3. Voice. As you’d expect from writers, their tweets are conversational and catchy. Sometimes they tweet headlines, but more often they pluck the pithiest part of a story.

4. Tech. They use Twitter cards and a custom URL.

Kudos to @JeremyStahl, the human behind @Slate.