Be careful of those headline rabbit holes.

With the growing number of self-serve checkout lanes at your favorite shopping venues, I have noticed that many of the supermarket tabloids that used to surround the cash register area have downsized or gone away completely, or maybe they have been placed in less conspicuous areas of the store.

Without mentioning any names, some of the crazy headlines I'd see in many of these publications were so outlandish and unbelievable I would have to pause and laugh.

How could anyone think these stories were anything but pure fiction, with maybe the exception of “Batboy Found in Cave,” and “Mermaid Cemetery Discovered.” Anything to make a dollar, I suppose. To make matters worse, at least one of these papers still sells more than 56,000 copies weekly.

Somebody must believe this stuff, which should not surprise me, especially at a time when social media has as many far-fetched tales posted every day, no, every minute of every day, as any of these tabloids.

It has gotten to the point where I'm not sure what I can believe and what I need to completely ignore.

With all that said, I must confess, that there have been a few headline rabbit holes I dove into while waiting for my groceries to make their way up the counter conveyor. But I would look around first to make sure I didn’t see anyone I knew!

As a writer, I have found the hardest thing for me to do is write a great, compelling headline that will make the reader want to learn more. I’ve never been good at it, something recognized by a past editor of mine.

After years of sending articles to him complete with as best of a headline as I could come up with, he finally told me that writing those introductions was his job and to stop doing it.

I was relieved, to be honest, and we still laugh about that whenever we reminisce about those days in the newspaper business.

Today, most of the headlines we read come by way of social media platforms and the gazillions of people who post these “articles,” both legitimate and often very opinionated, all in an effort to grab the reader’s attention enough to cause them to click on the “read more” link.

With the number of scammers out there, that can be a very dangerous move leaving the reader, myself included, to wonder what’s real and what’s not. It was a lot easier and much safer to pick up the grocery store tabloid and take a quick peek than to follow some of these trails on the web.

I guess my point to all this is if I have any doubts as to whether something I'm reading is truthful or not, I choose not to participate. There are still plenty of news outlets that give readers truth and facts rather than fantasy and hearsay.

I'm all about grabbing a reader's attention but never at the cost of losing credibility as I continue to write my way, down the backroads.