Sneak has always felt sorry for newspaper subeditors - wondering how they retain their loose grip on sanity while trying to craft an eye-catching headline for the latest story on Cisco’s router roadmap. According to a recent article by Steve Lohr in the New York Times, the mental wellbeing of subs is about to be given another test. In his piece, entitled “This boring headline was written for Google”, Lohr argues that hours spent agonizing over the perfect pun-laden headline could soon be a thing of the past as newspapers become more interested in attracting Google's algorithms rather than sentient readers.
Sneak has known this for some time, and has come up with a cunning ruse to help attract new readers. But sadly Sneak’s colleagues on the subbing desk have failed to see the light, and for strange reasons of professional pride are refusing to preface every Sneak story with the words “genuine Britney Spears sex tape”.

26 Jun 2006