Not long ago, geologists would have announced the drilling of a 2 mile bore-hole into the San Andreas active zone as: “NSF announces completion of Phase I boring, digital seismic arrays expected soon.” In a word, dull.

Today, however, the same event is reported as: “Scientists pierce the Earthquake Machine for the first time ever!” As it turns out making a run of the mill scientific development sound like a Michael Bay project is exactly what it takes to get covered by the popular press. Instead of scientific journals printing blurbs about the development months after the event, major media companies from around the world have covered the geological boring with feature-length stories.

Applying catching taglines and headlines to everyday stories is nothing new to bloggers who must figure out how to get RSS readers to click through their stories with only a headline to go on. Independent Sources faces this same pressure. For example, a credible story like ”Mudslide Victims Seek Bad Economic Policy” goes virtually unread while postings like:

• “Crisis in the Arctic“
• “Are iPods Dangerous“
• “Use a Penis Pump, Go to Jail“
• “Do not, I repeat, do not piss off this woman”

light up the stat counter.

technorati: earthquake machine blog marketing

This entry was posted on Thursday, August 4th, 2005 at 4:04 pm by Insider and is filed under Blogging. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.