“Trump signed a good law this week. Yes, really.” presents conflict: here’s a person who you usually expect to be doing harmful things, and here they are doing something good. It can’t make that hook without assuming something about their readers, and the hook draws people’s interest. It’s not an “unnecessary jibe”; it’s the sort of thing that draws far more interest than a headline like “Trump signed a good law about HIV this week.”
It’s not a tradeoff I would make in my writing, but Vox is a left-leaning outlet and it seems pretty reasonable to me for them to write for a left-leaning crowd.
That’s a good point, but I think Larks is annoyed that they do make that tradeoff—they’re okay putting in jibes at conservatives because it potentially helps them with leftists.
“Trump signed a good law this week. Yes, really.” presents conflict: here’s a person who you usually expect to be doing harmful things, and here they are doing something good. It can’t make that hook without assuming something about their readers, and the hook draws people’s interest. It’s not an “unnecessary jibe”; it’s the sort of thing that draws far more interest than a headline like “Trump signed a good law about HIV this week.”
It’s not a tradeoff I would make in my writing, but Vox is a left-leaning outlet and it seems pretty reasonable to me for them to write for a left-leaning crowd.
That’s a good point, but I think Larks is annoyed that they do make that tradeoff—they’re okay putting in jibes at conservatives because it potentially helps them with leftists.