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Publications do it, some more than others, some more blatantly than others. It's called clickbate and it's often in the form of deceptive or intriguing headlines meant to entice readers into clicking on a story. The more clicks, the more traffic, the more potential there is for additional ad revenue.
The latest, the more obvious clickbate headline surfaced Wednesday night in the Detroit Free Press in a story writen by a reporter from the Lansing State Journal. (Both papers are owned by the same company).
The headline is: "Tom Izzo is running for state representative in Lansing. But it's more complicated than that."
OK, so you see that headline and say to yourself, "what the heck, why would the MSU coach want to run for office? Isn't he still coach? "
And then voila, you click the story to find out that it's not thee Tom Izzo, the famous Michigan State basketball coach, but rather Tom Gerald Izzo, a candidate for the 74th House District seat that covers Delhi Township and southwestern Lansing, who is a General Motors retiree. And a longtime MSU athletics fan.
"I was born in Lansing, grew up on the west side, now I'm on the southwest side," Izzo tells the Lansing Journal. Izzo says he was out of high school and working for GM by the time he heard about the basketball coach.
And if you're wondering how we ended up reading the story...well, yes, we took the bate, the clickbate, that is.
