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Be very careful using a URL in your headline, especially if you don’t own it!

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I’m amazed at the mild foolishness exhibited by a NY Times headline writer in this article: “Wishyouwerehere.com: Blogs From the Road.” That’s right, the headline writer put a URL in the headline, which leads to several problems.

  1. The URL in the headline is nowhere in the article (either page). That’s appropriate (see #2), but confusing.
  2. The URL wishyouwerehere.com goes somewhere unrelated to travel blogs, which are the focus of the article. It’s not anything salacious, fortunately, just a UK-based production company, Fremantle Media, who’s (hopefully) thrilled with a small (?) amount of unsolicited traffic to their corporate website.

We’ll hope that Fremantle Media keeps up their domain registration, so the domain farmers don’t swoop in later.

Does the copy desk at the NY Times really not have a web browser available to them? Or, worse, they do, but never stopped to consider these outcomes?

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