Categories: OLD Media Moves

WSJ changes headline after being accused of insensitivity

People took to social media to decry the Wall Street Journal’s poorly-crafted headline that it published Wednesday when describing Japan’s red ant problem, reports Grace Carr of the Daily Caller.

Carr writes, “The WSJ changed its original headline – ‘Kon-ouchy-wa! Japan is freaking out about fire ants’ – to ‘Evacuate the Sandbox! Japan Is Freaking Out About Fire Ants‘ after it received heavy backlash on social media. Both headlines do however, set up the article’s loquacious description of the “powerful fangs” belonging to the “miscreants now terrorizing Japan,” namely, fire ants.

“The first title isn’t the only pun in the WSJ’s article, however, with lines like ‘as more marauders breached the nation’s borders, television-news shows began fanning concerns of a crippling attack,’ and ‘to some outsiders, however, this island nation may be making a mountain out of an anthill.’

“Readers were most disgusted with its Twitter title, and took to social media to express their feelings.”

Read more here.

Chris Roush

Chris Roush was the dean of the School of Communications at Quinnipiac University in Hamden, Connecticut. He was previously Walter E. Hussman Sr. Distinguished Professor in business journalism at UNC-Chapel Hill. He is a former business journalist for Bloomberg News, Businessweek, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, The Tampa Tribune and the Sarasota Herald-Tribune. He is the author of the leading business reporting textbook "Show me the Money: Writing Business and Economics Stories for Mass Communication" and "Thinking Things Over," a biography of former Wall Street Journal editor Vermont Royster.