Seattle Times columnist Danny Westneat has a great column from the end of 2005 describing in detail the sites most popular stories. The piece is a worthwhile read - eye opening about the business of journalism vs. the responsibility and ethics behind it. There is, without doubt, a war between so-called "serious" news and click-inducing, buzz inducing stories that have little reason to be in the "news" at all. Danny also mentions the Chilean newspaper - Las Últimas Noticias - that purports to base stories, research and bonuses solely on how many clicks a story receives online. I feel almost guilty to be living in an era where public opinion and media dollars is pushing hard to rid the journalism field of any responsibility or integrity.
I think what bothers me most about news sources and journalism in general, is how papers will publish just about anything when they know it is going to draw attention, regardless of the validity of it.
So many times I see stories on Iraq and other places where I can just imagine a journalist asking the most ignorant person they can find. All they have to do is find someone that will say what they want them to, and they have a story. Never-mind that Jethro the painter is not be the world's foremost official on nuclear centrifuge technologies, he said that Iran is trying to build nuclear weapons, IT MUST BE TRUE...
Great points, Tom. Looking at the sites you point to, however, gives a daily update in real time of most popular "current" stories. I think those results would vary drastically from the top 10 "most popular" stories of the year... Let me see if I can dig some up:
BBC
Rediff
The article talks about how none of the top 20 most read stories are important stories such as transportation, education, or campaign issues. He fails to mention in the text of the article that they excluded national and sports stories from the list. I wonder if they were left out on purpose to help him prove his point? I wonder if that would change his results. He does bring up an interesting point though. CNN's and other news organization's most popular stories are often not headline news. See for example: https://www.cnn.com/mostpopular/ https://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/7468311/