What exceptions do you get from item.title()? Naked except(terrible practice!) Doesn’t tell us. If it is an AttributeError (where itemthere is no method title, for example),
self.title = getattr(item, 'title', lambda: None)()
may be the one liner you are looking for (but the performance will not differ from you, -).
: OP ( self.title(), self.title().content.string, AttributeError, except), , , . : , & c ( , ? ...; -).
, , , - AttributeError, .