The New York Times Tuesday debuted Trending, a single page that breaks down the paper’s most popular stories at any given moment:
Screenshot. (www.nytimes.com/trending)
The feature — which is still in the experimental phase — subverts conventional news rankings by emphasizing stories that readers are interested in rather than stories that editors deem worthy of homepage treatment. From a release announcing “Trending”‘s launch:
The dashboard serves as a new discovery path for Times stories: while the Times homepage presents the most important news of the day, Trending reflects what resonates and excites readers and drives them to discuss and share.
In that sense, it’s reminiscent of Gawker Media’s infamous “Big Board,” — which has since been supplanted by a leaderboard — the place where staffers could monitor stories gaining the most traction with the company’s audiences.
There are differences, to be sure — where the Big Board offered specific metrics describing each popular story, Trending files each article under broad categories: Page-Turner (for stories that sustain reader interest), Renewed Interest (for older stories that see a resurgence in reader attention), Staying Power (articles that have remained popular) and Fresh Eyes (stories popular with new Times readers). And where the Big Board shined a spotlight exclusively on stories popular with new readers, Trending offers a more granular look that sorts by story type and traffic sources, including Facebook, Reddit, Twitter and Google Search.
But both Gawker’s leaderboard and Trending offer a reader-focused presentation that emphasizes engagement over the traditional news hierarchy. Its debut marks an increasing emphasis on audience development and transparency among news organizations about who’s reading what — and why.
