“Filth and fury”: The tabloid secrets to better PR pitching
The world is getting noisier, and it’s becoming harder to be heard. So how can you make sure your client’s message is seen above an avalanche of AI slop?
An answer can be found in the unlikeliest of places: tabloid newsrooms. The counterintuitive truth about effective communication is that it takes a real depth of skill to produce the shallowest, simplest content.
Nowhere is this clearer than in the headlines that sell millions of newspapers and generate billions of pageviews. A tabloid headline uses shock, sensation, and high emotion to shout a message at an unignorable volume and persuade readers to pick up a paper or click on a story.
It looks easy to write that way. Trust me – it’s not.
The dark arts of tabloid writing
I’m a former tabloid tech editor, now working as Director of Content for Proven Media Solutions in Washington, DC. During a period I now refer to as my PhD in clickbait, I worked on staff at three of Britain’s Fleet Street tabloids as they transitioned from print to digital, leading the launch of The Sun’s tech and science section as the site dropped its paywall and became a truly global news brand.
What I learned was that if you understand the dark arts of tabloid headline writing, you become better at grabbing attention and persuading people to act – the only two outcomes worth paying for in public relations.
Yes, there’s plenty of snobbery against the tabloids, and not without reason. I’m not going to pretend the content inside those salacious papers was always edifying – particularly during the sleazy golden age of print. Headlines about headless bodies in topless bars are not just shocking, but disturbing. But to a PR, those loud, garish words should be an education – even if they don’t look like one.
To understand why, I’d point to my favourite headline, written long before I was born. In 1976, The Daily Mirror, one of Britain’s best-known red-tops, splashed with the immortal headline “The Filth and the Fury” after a band called the Sex Pistols swore on live early-evening television, shocking the nation.
That now-iconic headline was vivid, sensational, and impossible to ignore. Crucially, it was also vague – creating a curiosity gap in the reader’s mind. Filth and fury are two powerful words. Seeing them together makes you want to know more. Words like that act as a pattern interrupt—a psychological jolt that breaks someone out of their habitual patterns of attention.
Writing a tabloid headline is more poetry than prose. Every word counts because you have just one fleeting chance to make an impression.
In print, a front-page splash has to literally stop someone as they walk by. On the internet, the need to get to the point is even sharper. Writers have around 60 characters and less than a second of a reader’s attention to earn a click.
Lessons for public relations professionals
So how do we apply this principle to pitching journalists? For PRs, the goal is to get journalists to open your emails, read them to the end, and take action – whether that’s commissioning a story, arranging an interview, or securing coverage. Tabloid-style writing is perfect for this job.
Creating a pattern interrupt with language that stands out in a noisy environment will get your pitches noticed. Leaving a curiosity gap by posing an unanswered question, tactfully withholding information, or painting a vivid picture that’s missing one key detail will ensure that your pitch is read.
In other words: make every situation as dramatic as possible.
For example, don’t just talk about a problem – describe a crisis. I once worked with a client who was worried that quantum computers would soon break the encryption that protects crypto and other sensitive data. I called that moment the “quantum apocalypse.” It’s a phrase that’s now common, but certainly not back when I used it. That story became one of the title’s most read articles, which is extremely rare for a PR placement. Although I don’t think I coined the phrase, I was certainly ahead of the game in using it.
Make sure to use words that stand out, and remember the job you’re doing. Your pitches end up in an inbox, not in print, so you can afford to be a bit sneaky when creating a pattern interrupt. For example, journalist lore suggests that articles with typos in the headlines get more clicks because they stick out like a sore thumb.
I once placed a client in the Financial Times using a subject line describing “the humanized non-human future.” Ugly? Sure. But weird, repetitive lines like that feel wrong and out of place to professional writers, so they will draw their attention.
Of course, it’s easy to overstep. Putting a typo in your email is unlikely to impress. Likewise, if you use a clickbait headline, make sure no questions are left hanging and that every loose end is tied by the time the journalist finishes the pitch.
Remember: PR is all about sales
A sales pitch works best when it slips past the target’s defenses. There are many small mistakes that can blow a pitch: the bad puns we love from tabloid front pages might make some reporters smile, but others will roll their eyes and move on.
Public relations practitioners should drop their snobbery around the popular press and start to really understand the psychological and linguistic tricks that allow simple words to have maximum impact. You don’t need to CAPITALIZE WORDS to show you’re excited and make them stand out. Just apply the tricks I’ve laid out here to your subject lines, doing more of what works and less of what doesn’t.
Reading the scandal sheets probably won’t teach you how to be a better human – but they can show you how to be a sharper, bolder communicator. In an era when humans are losing the soundclash with AI, we all need to master the act of being heard in an ever-noisier environment. There are few people better at that than the journalists of the tabloid media.
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This piece was originally published at Strategic Global by Jasper Hamill, Director of Content at Proven Media Solutions.
