What Readers Want

As a newspaper reporter, I always wondered how many people were actually reading my stories. Which articles were popular and which were ignored?

Thanks to the web, journalists can do that. If you haven’t seen any story-by-story traffic numbers for your station’s or publication’s website, ask to see them.

You can also peek into the minds of readers of some of the biggest publications.

The New York Times and ABCNEWS.com list stories that readers have most frequently e-mailed to friends:
• NYTimes.com 25 most e-mailed stories
• ABCNEWS.com 25 most e-mailed stories

CNN.com lists the top e-mailed stories, as well as the top saved stories. MSNBC.com has a unique twist on the idea, letting readers rate each story and then posting a running tally of the Top Ten.

Yahoo’s popularity lists give you a broader perspective because its news sections include dozens of news sources, such as wires, The New York Times and E!Online. Among the many lists the site offers are:
• The most-viewed news stories on Yahoo;
• The most-viewed photos on Yahoo!; a
• And even the most-viewed news stories of those Yahoo links to on other sites.

Yahoo also lists the most popular stories in Canada, Denmark, France, Germany, China, Italy, Spain, and the United Kingdom.

Check them regularly and you’ll find interesting patterns, articles you may have missed, choices that surprise you. Last Friday, for example, while NYTimes.com, MSNBC.com and CNN.com were all leading with the Mideast, the number one story on the “top” lists on all three sites was the homeless hit-and-run victim trapped in a windshield for two days.

Think of these as reader-generated front pages. Reading them is like reading news sites where the readers are making the editorial decisions. How do readers’ choices stack up against the pros’? You be the judge.

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