I use Google Reader to flick through headlines of various RSS feeds I’m interested in. With many thousands of articles in a given week, I really glance through the headlines before deciding to read any provided excerpt. Only if the excerpt tickles my fancy will I actually read the rest of the article.

I learnt of the news of Diego Maradona‘s end of tenure as Argentina’s national soccer team coach with 2 adjoining headlines from RTÉ and Breaking News.

Whilst both articles have the exact same wording for the first paragraph, both use wildly conflicting headlines to describe the news. Whilst RTÉ’s news editorial is generally superior to TCM/BreakingNews, they’ve really lost the battle on this one! Read RTÉ’s news report or TCM BreakingNews’ report.

For the record, Maradona wasn’t sacked. In fact to say he has “called it quits” is misleading as well (but nowhere near as misleading as RTÉ’s headline!). However, it was decided that his contract wouldn’t be renewed. Big difference, even if somewhat pedantic (moi?)!