[INFOGRAPHIC] Clickbait: Changing the Course of Content History

Or… You will never believe who was the first person to publish articles with click bait headlines! [INFOGRAPHIC] 😀

No, seriously now, despite the popular belief that clickbait headlines are a “new invention for the short attention spans of the Internet age”, it’s actually just a piece of old news. No elderly person can criticize the younger generation saying “back in my day…” because, well, clickbait headlines started even before their time.

Then…

It might surprise you, but the history of the clickbait as we know it today dates back to 1888, when the political cartoon The Evil Spirits of the Modern Daily Press was published. Highlighting scandal, criminal news, boasting lies, hypocrisy, paid puffery and many other gruesome characteristics of journalism, the picture only collected all what was (is) wrong with the news.

At the same time, thanks to Joseph Pulitzer’s newspaper the New York World, readers could follow the adventures of the Yellow Kid, a cartoon character who enjoyed the popularity of the present-day’s grumpy cat. Created by Richard F. Outcault, this sweet and loveable character managed to take the U.S. by storm, inspiring theaters and vaudeville shows across the country, offering its own wave of urban drama.

Nevertheless, due to prominent headlines that screamed excitement, faked interviews and lavish use of pictures related to the New York World, the editor of New York Press was desperately looking for a term that will describe the new kind of journalism represented in the Pulitzer’s papers. After several failed attempts, including “nude journalism” and “new journalism”, he opted for the phrase “yellow-kid journalism” that was later abbreviated to yellow journalism.

Yellow journalism reached its peak in 1989, when the Maine, U.S. battleship was sunk in Havana harbor. At the time, the war was raging, not only between the two great world powers, but between the two newspaper giants – the New York World and The Herald. Fighting for the greater reader attention, they focused on creating the hype around the current events, even if it meant spreading lies. The rumor that the Spanish were to blame for the devastating incident might not be the cause of the war itself, but it could be one of the drops that spilled the cup.

Furthermore, if we were to focus on Pulitzer’s newspaper and analyze it in detail, we would notice a section titled Skirmish which was basically the predecessor of today’s likes, upvotes and uniques. In this section, they actually boasted about being much bigger and popular broadsheet than its rival, The Herald.

Now…

Today, clickbait represents a headline which has only one goal – to create viral news. It is usually deliberately misleading, withholds information from the reader and is a rather unearned hyperbole. When you put it like that, it certainly seems like something so negative that no one would pay attention to. However, numbers tell a different story: according to the statistics, out of the most shareable internet content, 17% are listicles (headlines beginning with a numeral), 29% are personalized headlines and in total 79% contained the element of shock.

Yes, the headlines once represented the short description of the article, followed by the inverted pyramidal structure of the journalistic content writing. Today, we encounter a sea of headlines purposely omitting information regarding the article, putting content in second place. That no one wants to read it anymore is supported by the fact that almost 40% of people leave the page immediately after landing on it, while 5% don’t scroll at all. Still, many will opt for sharing the article even if they haven’t read it till the end (or even further than the first sentence).

It’s also interesting how the entire industry changed. According to the statistics, there was more than 54,000 people working at daily newspaper and by the 2015, the number dropped by 39%. Where did they go? We can only speculate that they chose newsrooms (e.g. Buzzfeed) since there are around 32,000 people working in such environments.

To find out more information about the history of clickbait and how it changed content writing, check out our infographics below. We even put some of the first clickbait headlines from the beginning of the 20th century that marked the beginning of the new era of journalism. 🙂

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