It’s called click click click. I came to the story thinking I was going to read something I never knew unlike all the rest of the stupid stories being presented here today (more stories about crazy shit republicans say and do) and yet I read this meaningless piece very well explained by Harry Truman I must say.
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Thank you. I agree.
Josh, the article is annoying because it’s as much about the author as it is about black women in history, it’s misleading headline, and it leaves out the most important details about Mrs. King’s murder that contradicts the author’s main point. The reason Mrs. King’s murder is not studied by historians is because it had nothing to do with the civil rights movement, it was a tragic random act perpetrated by a person who was mentally ill.
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I have a dim memory of an editorial you wrote on the subject after there had been a spate of criticism about misleading headlines in which I recall you as praising the person who wrote the headlines.
So how are the headlines generated?
I am ashamed to say that I had forgotten about Mrs. King. I remember when it happened (yes, I am that old), but had completely forgotten that she, like her son, was a martyr in the civil rights movement. The other notable black women who were martyrs of the civil, human and womens rights movements, I am absolutely mortified when I say that I did not even know about. Like the author of the piece, I suddenly feel like I only had half of an education.
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I had not remembered (I was 12 at the time) this story of MLK’s mother. While I enjoyed the article the headline is debatable.
But if you want a clearly inappropriate headline check out the “Murdered Prosecutor” headline on this recent TPM piece. The investigation is ongoing and could as well be found to be a suicide.
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That was my assumption, too, if only because it’s usually women who are interested in pursuing women’s history, but the brief bio at the end of the article refers to the author as "he’.
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More important than who actually writes the headline is who approves it for publication.Headlines should not be boring, but they also shouldn’t mislead or make the reader feel manipulated. So the question is: Was Alberta King “assassinated” or is that a term that was used intentionally to draw in reader’s interest.
In this case the the author himself claims she was “assassinated…just like her son,” So the headline writer is only just as guilty as the writer of creating a shocking, but misleading premise for a mildly interesting article which is not at all the importance of women in the civil rights movement (we learn nothing about them) but the author’s own journey from ignorance to slightly better than average awareness.
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Hello Josh! I’ve been visiting TPM for a long time, so I like to think I have some sense of what has changed over time. I just want to tell you, I don’t agree with most of the complaints here. When it comes to headlines, a certain amount of attention-grabbing at the expense of accuracy is so common in the industry it is to be expected, and the headlines here are quite tame compared to most online news sources, and even paper media. I don’t think it’s a big deal, if the story is still interesting enough that I don’t feel like I’ve wasted my time. So, I think you guys are doing just fine.
Having said that, I think this article should have been initially declined and returned to the author for revision. A lot of relevant information was omitted, and in general I think it would have been better after some changes or even a full rewrite.
Keep up the good work! Love the site!
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No article starts well for me when there’s a factual error in the first sentence. She was killed in 1974.
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This is the Salon-ification of TPM because it follows its path down the road of trivialization of the news— big on shock stuff of no real consequence, low on digging into the facts and analysis. You do not have to have reporters with notepads out there to write something that complements the NYTimes, but you have to have writers who read that any other journals that do the reporting, know how to research, i.e., have a broad enough education to know connections between things, like the Thirty Years War and the Shia-Sunni wars of today, that until 1964 no one thought the 14th Amendment forbade any discrimination except on the basis of race, what government funding of science meant to education the 50’s and 60’s, and so forth. Right now I would bet that If I walked into the TPM newsroom and asked around, half of the news employees would have no more idea of what the Cuban missile crises was than Dana Perino did when she became Bush’s press secretary. I would love to be proved wrong, but time after time there is so little depth in what TPM does scratching the surface gets you to the bottom of the story. This story is just another example of that. Whoever approved it (you, Josh?) did not even realize that (a) it was not a story, and (b) the story did not even tell what it was about.
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IMHO the only writer still worth reading at salon.com is Joan Walsh, a certified leftie. She doesn’t write articles as much as she used to, and she also does TV appearances such as Ed’s show, but she is a worthwhile voice who cuts through most of the clutter in the talk-osphere
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It’s Salonification because the article told us nothing about its purported topic and too much about the author.
Salonification = fatuous usually.
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“Author Uses Sensational and Misleading Headline For Article About Herself”
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Have you never heard of the TPM headline fairy?
Unbelievable. Flogging this poor woman’s murder as click bait. I’m super angry this got such prominent placement on this site. Murder and assassination are two different things. Why compound the pain of the tragedy to make incendiary claims that MLK’s mother was also the victim of an assassin’s bullet?
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Agree. Still, since this morning, it’s Top headline material here.
C’mon Josh.
It’s these things that give me pause. I’m —> this <— close to being a paying member.
“Historical omission points toward a culture’s subconscious beliefs that some people matter less than others.”
Brilliant.
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Sad but true. Prime membership is looking increasingly pointless to me…
It is a sad truth that I often go to the comments section of a TPM story to get the actual facts the story’s headline promise (or an explanation of why the headline is quite misleading, as in this case).
TPM has value to me if it provides information. Deceptive, click-bait headlines, and content-free copy are worthless to me, as a reader.
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