At least that's what they want to read about on their local newspaper's website -- a lot.
Yep -- forget about all those carefully researched investigative series on hunger or those probing examinations of fraud in the granting of public contracts. Those just put readers to sleep. ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ
We want sex. And Confederate flags. Preferably a sex scandal involving a Confederate flag.
The Columbia Daily Tribune of Missouri recently published a list of its most popular local stories based on the number of hits each story received on the paper's website:
Forget all that hard work producing penetrating investigative reports, brilliant political analyses, heart-wrenching stories that comfort the afflicted, afflict the comfortable and win Pulitzer Prizes.
People want sex, crime, violence, tragedy, celebrity and scandal.
At least that holds true for people who read articles on the Web, and the jury’s still out on whether they’re any different from those of us who prefer the printed product. That reality is both exciting and horrifying.
Now, this is hardly a surprise. The news industry has long had a conflict over whether to give prominence to stories readers want to read versus stories they need to read. Do you put the story about a new sewerage system on Page 1 or the story about Britney Spears not wearing underwear?
For a long time this conflict was resolved by sheer ignorance -- there was no reliable way to measure what stories people were actually reading. Until the internet came along, of course.
And there's the problem -- publishers know that Britney Spears going commando is a lot more interesting than whatever the City Council is doing. And so do advertisers.
Wanna guess which you are going to start seeing more of and which you are going to start seeing less of?
The top story for 2006 at the Columbia Daily Times:
Two Hickman High School students disrupted a multicultural assembly yesterday in the school’s auditorium by unfurling a Confederate flag from the balcony.
Ryan Lanman, 17, who is white, and a friend enacted their plan while another student was singing "The Yellow Rose of Texas" to commemorate the Spanish-American War and honor Texas.
After the disruption, the students involved were told to leave, and the assembly continued, Principal Mike Jeffers said, adding that he couldn’t talk about whether the students would be disciplined.
Lanman, reached by phone after the assembly yesterday afternoon, said he and fellow student Kevin Meyers meant to "show Southern pride" and didn’t intend the flag to be racist.
The third most popular story was a visit by Jared, the guy in the Subway commercials who lost a lot of weight eating Subway sandwiches. I kid you not.
I never would have picked that January geeker about the guy who lost weight eating Subway sandwiches as the third-biggest local story of the year on the Web. He spoke to a nutrition class at the University of Missouri-Columbia and held up a pair of old pants. If you want to know the honest truth, that’s a story we might not have covered at all in an earlier era of journalistic narcissism, when newspapers were almost a utility, like electricity, and no self-respecting household would have thought of going without a subscription. Jared wouldn’t have been "important" enough to cover. Now we’re a little wiser about the realities of media competition, and we try to give readers what they want in addition to what we think they need.
Yep -- More Jared, less of that depressing shit from Iraq.
And the most popular national/international story from the wire services?
But plenty of people went to www.columbiatribune.com to learn about beer that won’t upset your tummy. In a curious twist, the No. 1-viewed story on the Web this year came from the wire: "Brewer taps gluten-free beer market." People with celiac disease from all over the country, apparently, linked to our version of the AP story in April, which scored more than 92,000 hits.
Here's the top 15 with the number of hits for each:
- Rebel flag shakes up assembly 30,826
- Gunman opens fire at Jehovah's Witness hall 30,465
- Jared chews the fat at MU 22,689
- Wallowing in fun (Hallsville mud run) 20,750
- Realtors warn female members of odd request 20,171
- Slide Show: Severe weather hits Mid-Missouri 18,498
- Quin Snyder quits 17,859
- Janitor strives to unlock code behind graffiti 17,781
- Wii’s democracy makes mockery of meritocracy 16,766
- Drug idea a bust for rocketeer 15,991
- ‘48 Hours’ apologizes for altered image 15,580
- Supporters stymie picketers 12,348
- Thefts at frat lead to arrest of ex-athlete 11,512
- Two teens die in wrecks 10,834
- Slide Show: Storm packs a wallop 10,394
And so, the ideal newspaper story guaranteed to generate thousands and thousands of hits would go something like this:
ANYTOWN, U.S. -- Jared Fogle of Subway sandwich weight-loss fame was arrested Tuesday after showing up for a speech wearing nothing but a Confederate battle flag.
Fogle, who was supposed to speak on the new Subway beer diet that guarantees rapid weight loss but won't upset your stomach, was arrested after waving the flag and revealing he was not wearing any underwear.