Boring Headlines

In 1986, Michael Kinsley, then the editor of the The New Republic, initiated a contest to find journalism’s most boring headline.  He was inspired by a headline he’d recently seen in the New York Times, and he challenged his readers to find one more boring that “Worthwhile Canadian Initiative.”  The winner of Kinsley’s contest was “Debate Goes on Over the Nature of Reality” (though I do not remember the publication).

From time to time, journalists propose new winners.  In 2011, Jonathan Chait (also writing in The New Republic) suggested “Chemist Doubts Hair-Straightener With Formaldehyde-Free Formula.”

Now, in the age of on-line publications, I have a new nominee, this one from Fivethirtyeight.com.  It is more suited to our times, but still boringly uninformative: “There’s Almost No Way Energy Policy Can Satisfy Everyone.”  This has every feature to which a boring headline could ever aspire.  First, it is obvious and therefore nearly pointless.  Has anyone ever believed that energy policy could satisfy everyone? Of course not.  Consequently, why bother with a headline pointing that out.  But in addition to that, it also hedges its own claim by telling us there is “almost” no way, thus making it vague and equivocal.  A true double play of boringness.

Boring headlines, however, do not necessarily introduce unimportant stories. Relatively few people today care all that much about the formaldehyde content of hair straightener, although there will always be continuing interest in the nature of reality — how much of it is virtual? — especially in Silicon Valley.

The worthwhile Canadian initiative, on the other hand, happens to have played a significant role in the recent presidential election, and continues to be debated over Twitter and in Congress.  It was NAFTA.