The New York Times ‘Latinos Move Up, From Picking Crops to Running the Farm’ Headline Fail

Aug 17, 2014
2:12 PM

UPDATE, August 18, 2014: The Times changed the headline on its digital site.

We have been saying this year that the lack of diverse editors at The New York Times is really showing and becoming more and more common. While the country’s “paper of record” has some solid Latin@ reporters on staff, when it comes to actual editors who are responsible for final copy and final headlines, the Times continues to fail.

Maybe after today’s Twitter headline debacle, the Times might wake up. Here is what happened. Earlier today, the Times’ Twitter page tweeted out the following headline and story:

As you might imagine:

And so on and so on.

The problem is that the headline has now become the story, instead of (wait for it) the actual story. The actual story, as you might imagine, is not so simplistic. That’s the problem with the headline. It missed the central point of the story. For example, the story included a video called “From Field to Front Office.” That would have been an improvement. Or what about “Latino-Owned US Farms Increase 21% in Past Five Years?”

Proving once again that even though you have strong stories, a headline goes a long way—especially in the digital news space. Editors matter just as much as reporters. Whoever came up with that headline did a disservice to the published story.

There were so many other ways to phrase that headline. Too bad the Times’ editors failed on this one. Again.

By the way, one profile raised some good points about the actual story as well: