Or, maybe he went there himself, because he's got a real problem, or maybe because he's trying to keep it secret, and the bodyguard went to fetch him.

Yeah, and have you ever gotten into a full-blown brawl with anyone?

Sex?

No, I'm explaining to you a basic principle of media. I can sign you up for a Communications 101 course at the local junior college if that would be less irritating to you.

Yeah... it is a problem. Solved by journalists.

I'm looking forward to when they all go broke. Mainly so that all of the people who shouted at me on Gawker sites about how they'd never go broke can apologize. It wont' happen, but I can dream.

You don't seem very sharp.

Nobody would read it. And a big part of the job of journalists is to contextualize things. 4,000 is a seemingly abstract number. It's got to be compared to something.

No, I disagree.

I think he says all that... It's all designed to pull eyeballs, that's what the media does. It's how it s done, yet people will screech about click bait over virtually anything.

Potato, potatoe.

For the sake of alerting readers that this article is worth their time. Baiting for their clicks.

And I think you just articulated Marchmans point in this post... Well he also argues those people who relentlessly harp on anything designed to draw any eyeballs as "click bait" are dicks.

I dunno, I got it, in a non dog whistle way. It could work. But, I agree it's racist dog whistle, which is arguably why not to use it - because so many people will be distracted, it undermines the attempt to contextualize. It arguably provokes for reasons that I don't think DS was trying to.

We do this all the time - not necessarily with 9/11, but we are always comparing some fucking tragedy to something for context... "More people are killed by double headed dildos than by mustard gas attacks in WWI" Blah blah blah.

So, what media outlet has an economic model that is not based on drawing eyeballs?

Well, in the article above, he does offer a pretty solid definition — a dishonest headline. But, he points out, in practice, it means anything that draws eyeballs. But that headline for the NYT piece draws eyeballs, honestly, and should not, in my book, be considered clickbait.

He did write the following, which correct me if I'm wrong, is pretty close to what you're saying.

Your #3 is a problem — not all Gawker content is designed to draw eyeballs. There is an incentive program for writers to draw eyeballs, and clearly some writers (Neetzan) are/were operating solely to draw eyeballs. That dude, Ken, who writes long-winded (but good!) posts about being sad that his dog, which he rescued…

I think that's a good point, but I think his point would be that clickbait does exist, but just because you don't like a headline doesn't mean it's clickbait. And he feels most of the shit being called "clickbait" is not actually clickbait.