Chairmen Gruber:[1. In a footnote to an article on app economies.]
Sensational headlines are one of the worst aspects of web-based news media. Pre-web, there wasn’t much temptation for publications to juice their headlines, with the notable exception of tabloids. In print, all publications care about is the circulation for entire issues. With the web, particularly with CPM advertising, publications are motivated to drive traffic to each individual article. Total page views, rather than issue sales, are the metric, and one easy way to juice page views is to use sensational headlines.