Perhaps if you tag posts instead of delete them then people won't get upset ?

Where do you get the idea that there's a lot of upset over post removals? I can't even remember the last person who modmailed us to complain about that.

For instance if people make up a shitty title, tag it as "Sensationalised Title" or something.

We tried that but it resulted in too many people still making editorialized submissions, so we tightened it up. We'll reconsider in the future if the problem subsides.

Deleting posts will always look bad if they are news in any way

If a post was removed because it's editorialized you ALWAYS have the option to resubmit with a non-editorialized title. In fact it's what I write in my removal messages: "Resubmit with non-editorialized title". We never censor news here.