I find this situation quite strange.
Some journalists write articles that are 3,000 to 4,000 words long but choose to use titles that are only 3 to 5 words. In contrast, publications like the Daily Mail tend to use the maximum number of words possible in their titles, despite the fact that their articles are usually under 1,000 words.
Why is that?
Click bait!
Respectable articles are “it’s about this. If you’re interested, check it out.”
Garbage articles “You won’t believe what happens when this 80 year old lady gets behind the wheel of a brand new Ferrari!”
This is one of the few journalism-related questions I can’t recall the answer to from college (we didn’t cover tabloid practices much in the journalism electives I took other than some high-level concepts), but I’ll take a stab with an educated guess:
Tabloids typically sell from their headlines, especially ones that make the cover (i.e. the ones you see when you’re standing in line to check out at the grocery store). The more shocking/crazy details they can cram in, the more likely someone will be to buy it. The articles themselves are something of a formality, really. Since the content is often poorly sourced, highly biased, of little substance, or otherwise suspect, and libel laws still apply, there’s generally not a lot of content to fill out 3,000 - 4,000 words that’s safe for them to print.
Edit: Yeah, like another commenter said: It’s the original “click bait”
For people who have been trained to eat junk food news, the headline is all they have the attention and critical thinking skills for.
I haven’t noticed the phenomenon but I’ve not been looking might end up like the yellow car thing for me.
If i had to stab into the dark i would say because a reputable author can summaries their stories better then rubbish tabloid writers
