Selected items of interest to the media community
• How Forbes Stole A New York Times Article And Got All The Traffic
February 20, 2012
The New York Times writer spent months doing research for a story. The article was well written with an interesting topic – how large companies target your purchasing habits to better serve you. The only problem was a less than compelling title. Nick O’Neill writes:
The original title was “How Companies Learn Your Secrets”. Kashmir Hill, a writer at Forbes, realized this and quickly developed a condensed version of the article with a far more powerful title: “How Target Figured Out A Teen Girl Was Pregnant Before Her Father Did“. It cut out the crap and got to the real shocker of the story. As of the writing of this story, the New York Times article has 60 likes and shares on Facebook versus 12,902 which the Forbes article has. The Forbes article also has a mind boggling 680,000 page views, a number that can literally make a writer’s career.
You can read O’Neil’s entire article here.