• Fellowships
  • Reports
  • Lab
  • Storyboard
    • Nieman Foundation at Harvard
    HOME
    About
    Subscribe
    Archives
              
    Foundation
    Reports
    Storyboard
    LATEST STORY
    Would you pay to be able to quit TikTok and Instagram? You’d be surprised how many would
    Business Models Mobile & Apps Audience & Social Aggregation & Discovery Reporting & Production
    ABOUT                    SUBSCRIBE
    June 22, 2021, 2:10 p.m.
    In The New York Times, A Story on Eels Achieves Headline Perfection
    LINK: www.nytimes.com  ➚   |   Posted by: Laura Hazard Owen   |   June 22, 2021

    Two weeks into their science fellowship with The New York Times, Sabrina Imbler wrote what media Twitter has unofficially but overwhelmingly deemed the world’s best headline.

    Imbler, 26, who is also writing a book about sea creatures for Little, Brown, stressed that the headline’s format was a joint production with Michael Roston, the Times’ senior staff editor for the science section. Roston was “the memelord who came up with the format,” Imbler told me via DM.

    Roston explained that he’d come across Times columnist Carl Zimmer’s retweet of one of the eel videos, and “because I’ve been on the internet too long, I immediately started thinking of ‘that’s a moray’ tweets to go with it, and I even tweeted one last week.”

    When they filed the story, Imbler had written “When an eel climbs a ramp to eat squid from a clamp, that’s a moray” as the dek. Roston decided it should be the headline, and then he and Imbler wrote more Dean Martin-inspired rhymes to caption the photos in the story.

    “I triply checked that the forceps were technically clamps, so as not to introduce any errors in pursuit of the bit,” Imbler said.

    Show tags
     
    What’s the best way to follow how the news is changing?
    Our daily email, with all the freshest future-of-journalism news.
    Prefer a once-a-week email? »
    The latest from Nieman Lab
    Would you pay to be able to quit TikTok and Instagram? You’d be surprised how many would
    Peter Martin
    BREAKING: The ways people hear about big news these days; “into a million pieces,” says source
    Joshua Benton
    In 1924, a magazine ran a contest: “Who is to pay for broadcasting and how?” A century later, we’re still asking the same question
    Julia Barton
    You’re more likely to believe fake news shared by someone you barely know than by your best friend
    Joshua Benton
    To find readers for longform investigations, Public Health Watch leans on partners and in-person work
    Sarah Scire
    Join the 60,000 who get the freshest future-of-journalism news in our daily email.
    Would you pay to be able to quit TikTok and Instagram? You’d be surprised how many would
    “The relationship he has uncovered is more like the co-dependence seen in a destructive relationship, or the way we relate to addictive products such as tobacco that we know are doing us harm.”
    BREAKING: The ways people hear about big news these days; “into a million pieces,” says source
    The New York Times and the Washington Post compete with meme accounts for the chance to be first with a big headline.
    In 1924, a magazine ran a contest: “Who is to pay for broadcasting and how?” A century later, we’re still asking the same question
    Radio Broadcast received close to a thousand entries to its contest — but ultimately rejected them all.
    Help advance the Nieman Foundation’s mission “to promote and elevate the standards of journalism” by making a donation.

    To promote and elevate the standards of journalism

    Covering thought leadership in journalism

    Pushing to the future of journalism

    Exploring the art and craft of story
    © 2024 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College  /  Some rights reserved
    Harvard Trademark Privacy Digital Accessibility
    Walter Lippmann House    One Francis Ave.    Cambridge, MA 02138    617 495 2237