Why you should care (about headlines that start with “Why”).
by Kinzy Janssen
Every day, as part of my job as a business blogger, I am required to check in with Forbes.com—the business magazine best known for its lists and rankings—and it was in skimming through their headlines that I noticed a curious, cumulative pattern. Yet I soon realized it wasn’t confined to Forbes.com’s particular strategy or aesthetic—I noticed the trend popping up all over the online world, from Huffington Post to an essay written by the President of the United States.
I’m talking about an epidemic of headlines that follow a basic formula: Why [Noun] Matters.
If something matters, it is important. It carries weight and significance. It means something; it counts. We care deeply about mattering. Mattering matters to us.
In the age of online journalism, which has been referred to as the battle for eyeballs, our choices have both ballooned (blogs) and shrunk (newspapers that do their own reporting). With endless layers of noise and interference, it’s no wonder the desperation of media is visible on the front lines of the battlefield—the headlines.
But it’s not just your run-of-the-mill clickbait. These headlines make an unfair assumption about their readers, implying that we are inherently callous and apathetic and need a damn good reason to tap into our reserves of compassion or interest. Like a ransom, we won’t grant our attention until the “why” is first handed over. We’re cagey, skeptical; a bunch of cynical teenagers slumped in our desks. The headline rebuts a comment we did not make: “I don’t care about [noun].”
Given this context, the following pattern is even more alarming: Why Poland Matters. Why Ukraine Matters. Why Morocco Matters to the U.S. Why Turkey Matters to the U.S.
These Forbes.com articles often take the form of an economic manifesto, but I still cringe at the ethnocentric notion that a writer—a foreign one—can christen a nation as mattering. To me, (and at the risk of reducing world affairs to warm fuzzies), all countries matter because we’re interconnected—not in an indirect, Butterfly Effect kind of way, but in a very real, we-all-breathe-the-same-air kind of way. That’s the environmental argument. There’s also an empathetic (if tautological) one: that this country matters because all countries matter. That this person matters because all people matter. Yet these headlines erase any context but our own.
But it’s not just headlines. Writers assume readers drag their apathy along with them as they read. In Why China Matters, the columnist extends a there-there pat on the head to soften the overwhelming fact that we don’t live in a vacuum:
Like it or not, what is going on 10,000 miles away from America matters…This brings us to the point of why what happens in China matters. If China’s real estate market stops rising, much of the capital that has been flowing into its property market will be forced to take a write-down.
Are you starting to see the parenthetical lurking after each headline, almost but not quite visible? Why Poland Matters (To Your Wallet). Why Ukraine Matters (To America’s Growth and Stability). Indeed, some headlines do take this unsubtle route, shamelessly connecting the only dot that matters: Why Cyprus Matters To Your Investment Portfolio. While not surprising given the context of foreign policy and economics on Forbes, it still feels shallow and one-minded—and unapologetically so.
Writers assume readers drag their apathy along with them as they read.
A similar sentiment appears in Why Azerbaijan Should Matter To America:
There are a small number of people in the United States who care about Azerbaijan and most of them were there, along with some congressmen, state representatives and a large numbers [sic] of Azeris… this isn’t a question of sentiment… My own interest in Azerbaijan requires greater explanation…
He’s right that sentiment isn’t at play here, but that’s the problem. Since when must an individual defend their interest in the broader world? Has curiosity gone out of style?
And yet I think arguing that a nation or a person or a custom actually matters has the opposite effect than intended, since the jumping-off point for the writer is acknowledging that a value isn’t widely recognized. Otherwise, why pose it as an argument? So before we even digest the first sentence, we hear the implied question: Does Ukraine matter? We hear ourselves ask it.
Another variation on the theme is [Headline] (And Why You Should Care!). It’s almost as if an annoyed copyeditor is hunched over her desk, taking a red pen to all headlines that don’t address the reader’s inherent lack of interest. She sighs heavily, adding the flourish like it’s just another forgotten apostrophe:
How Congress Works and Why You Should Care. What is Oculus Rift – And Why Should You Care? A Ranking of the Most Sprawling U.S. Metro Areas, And Why You Should Care. Why Breaking Bad is the Best Show Ever And Why That Matters. Walmart is Where the Unbanked Shop And Why It Matters. (That one even sounds grammatically forced!).
What’s interesting is that these internet editors start from an assumption of zero interest and end with an assumption of 100 percent interest: We know you didn’t care before, but that’s because it wasn’t properly explained to you. Now you’ll care.
Some media sites are embedding the formula into the very fabric of their layout. For example, underneath every OZY headline there is a static blue box labeled WHY YOU SHOULD CARE—a widget-type template into which journalists can enter text. Below the headline Confessions of a Freelancer: I Miss the Office Water Cooler appears WHY YOU SHOULD CARE: “because as much as we complain about commutes and cubicles, at our core, even freelancers are human beings.” As subheadings go, it’s alright. It’s not a baby giraffe: it can definitely stand on its own two legs without a heavy handed introduction. But there it is, inscribed in a box like a MAIN POINT highlighted in an SAT prep booklet.
We know you didn’t care before, but that’s because it wasn’t properly explained to you. Now you’ll care.
See, if I’m really as apathetic as these news sites assume I am, I would already have a response to that subheading queued up: Why should I care that freelancers are social beings? I’m not a freelancer. With each new rationale, we can still ask “Why should I care?” Parents with kids as young as two know this instinctively: no answer is adequate to prevent the next “why.” You might as well brace for the deluge. Yet while two-year-olds are displaying a newfound curiosity, adults are perhaps exercising their right not to care. Do readers (especially us media mavens) feel a stubborn power when we exercise that right, scrolling past news headlines that don’t deserve our attention, rationing our clicks?
Media that addresses the why—whether consciously or unconsciously—is not a new phenomenon. The why is important. But this new way of addressing it is both accusatory and defensive. It sends a message of, “we don’t trust our readers to trust us.” Journalists feel that they need to prove to readers in the headline that they will cover one of the basics: the why. But when they point to the rationale with a big red arrow, this cheapens the article, not to mention the journalist and the reader.
Here’s what I don’t think some editors understand: relevancy is relative. That’s why we’re not all reading the same thing. There isn’t a code to activate caring amongst all readers. Even if you insert an earnest And why you should care! to an article about pro-wrestling, I’m not gonna care. What it does is paint all readers with the same brush. What it doesn’t do is reach a wider circle of readers.
More interesting (and perhaps more troubling) is that writers have begun invoking noncontroversial themes, too, by reasserting that they matter. Why Affordable Housing Matters. Why Regular Citizens Matter. Why Martin Luther King Matters. Why Justice Matters. Why Food Matters. I mean, can we at least agree that an influential historical figure has relevancy for today? That some form of justice, even if it’s our own subjective version, matters? That food (obviously) matters—you know, to keep us alive? Everything is two sided, but the argument seems to have changed. It’s not “What is just?” it’s “Does Justice Matter?” It’s not “What is Martin Luther King’s Legacy?” but “Does he have one?”
Occasionally a headline-writer will use a tiny little qualifier—still—that deepens the meaning by drawing our attention to a cultural seam beginning to split: Why Classical Music Still Matters. Why Marriage Still Matters. Why God Still Matters.
It’s as if we’re starting from a blank slate, knowing nothing, crawling around on a blank map with our glasses off. We feel the need to reaffirm everything. And I do mean everything. It’s impervious to parody. Why Kissing Matters. Why Kindness Matters. Why Moms Matter. It’s not as if kindness or Moms are part of someone’s unique value system. Rather, it’s as if cumulative knowledge and philosophy and academic disciplines got lost like scraps of paper in the wind and now the bits have to be re-gathered and transcribed and rewritten.
Was the internet the gust that ripped them out of our hands? Does it matter? I’ll let you decide for yourself.
Kinzy is The Riveter’s social media editor.
