What makes a person read beyond a headline? Is it the topic that's of interest or the way the headline is written? I think it's a little bit of both.
I must confess that I will read the first few sentences of a sports story if the headline makes me curious. Anyone who knows me is aware of my minimal interest in any sport beyond figure skating, which is a sport, by the way. That's a blog topic for another day. My point is, if a headline on a sports story is good, even I might read the first few paragraphs of the story.
Headline writing is harder than people think. The writer has to get his point across in very few words or lose the reader's attention forever. Short verbs are really good for this, which explains the popularity of words like "mulls," "nixes" and "hikes" in news headlines.
So, how do you write a good headline? Think about how you would describe the plot of a movie to someone who hasn't seen it. You'd just give a summary, right? Take that summary and boil it down even more. Let's say there was a new character limit on Twitter and you had to make your description even shorter. Strip the description down to the bare bones. Leave out the details. Just give the important stuff. There's your headline.
If you get stuck, start with a subject and a verb and build from there.
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