Kiss my asterisk: Bad headline writing in Singapore

Sure we’re in squeaky clean Singapore, but I won’t tell.

Go ahead, and kiss it: *.

I hope you considered it, because there’s a lesson to be learned in all of this asterisk kissing.

Headlines matter. They matter in newspapers. They matter in corporate communications. But in Singapore, where they matter as much as anywhere else, they don’t begin to kiss the surface of good writing.

They simply suck.

In Journalism 101 (anywhere but Singapore apparently), here’s the most important lesson:

The following are two news headlines. Choose the best one:
A) Dog Bites Man
B) Man Bites Dog

Do you see the difference? Dogs bite men all the time, as well as women and children. It happens, unfortunately. This is not news, and certainly not a headline.

But “Man Bites Dog”—now that could be a headline, especially in Singapore, where it’s hard to find a good dog-biting man nowadays. Yes, that would be news.

Unfortunately, there are just too many “Dog Bites Man” types of headlines in Singapore. You can have your pick at who to blame (government, culture, etc.), but headline writing reminiscent of the New York Post (such as the following) doesn’t often happen here:

· Kiss Your Asteroid Goodbye! (Yes, I borrowed my headline from the Post, which ran a story about a meteor that missed the earth in 1998)
· Headless Body In Topless Bar (self explanatory)
Call these headlines sensationalist, but they—and many more like them outside of Singapore –get the job done. They draw readers in.
By contrast, as I write this, here is the headline of Singapore’s Today paper today: Shorter wait for commuters as faulty trains return to service.

Well, did anyone think there would be a longer wait with more trains getting back on the tracks? Today fails Journalism 101 by stating the obvious.

There are much poorer headlines out there in Singapore still. Some may be on your company website.

That’s right. Gone are the days when traditional media dominated news and information. Every company can be a media company today, although few know it.

“Search engines such as Google have democratized content to such a point that anyone with good content and a bit of search engine savvy can find their content on the first page,” according to Joe Pulizzi, founder of Junta42 and the Content Marketing Institute. “As long as today's buyers get their answers, they don't care as much where the content comes from. They are open to learning from and acting on quality content, whether it comes from McGraw-Hill, or from a custom publication, newsletter, a company Web site, or a favorite blog.”

What that means is that the content you put on your corporate website, in news releases or in your company publications competes on a more equal footing than ever with Today, the Straits Times, the Business Times and the New York Times.

So if a company communication is your best foot forward (as it should be), why crap all over it?
One reason is because if journalists are writing poor headlines in Singapore, you better believe corporate communications personnel—who excel at business speak—are doing worse.

As a major Singapore-based company, Hyflux could be churning out great corporate content, but here’s the best it could do for a recent press release headline:

Hyflux Awards Power Plant Contract.
Well if that didn’t grab you, maybe the lead sentence will:
Hydrochem (S) Pte Ltd, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Hyflux Ltd and the engineering, procurement and construction (“EPC”) contractor for the Tuaspring Desalination Plant in Singapore, has awarded the contract to supply, construct and commission an on-site 411 MW combined cycle gas turbine power plant at the Tuaspring Desalination Plant to a consortium comprising Siemens Pte Ltd, a subsidiary of Siemens AG, and Siemens AG (collectively “Siemens”).

I hope you’re still reading, but I might have lost you there.

You yourself can cite endless cases of bad corporate content. Go ahead, click to the nearest website that ends in .sg (maybe your own) and start thinking of ways you could make headlines and other written content better.

Or, think about kissing your apparently boring company assets goodbye.

Matt Young, Editor & Publisher, Media MICE