LLM-guided headline rewriting for clickability enhancement without clickbait

ArXi:2603.22459v1 Announce Type: cross Enhancing reader engagement while preserving informational fidelity is a central challenge in controllable text generation for news media. Optimizing news headlines for reader engagement is often conflated with clickbait, resulting in exaggerated or misleading phrasing that undermines editorial trust. We frame clickbait not as a separate stylistic category, but as an extreme outcome of disproportionate amplification of otherwise legitimate engagement cues.