While newspapers are fading it seems in their hard copy format, I think their traffic online will only grow as they adapt to the Internet world. Offermatica has a great piece on what people are really looking for and what editors choose to show. It’s always interesting how, why, what, where, and when a particular story is displayed on or in a newspaper. The buried story versus the front page photo. Is it hunger, war, crime, human interest, politics, or science that’s featured. I’m always going right to the most emailed articles to see what the most interesting story is at the NY Times.
‘Now compare the “Most Searched” list to the “Times Topics” (the list of People, Subjects, Organizations and Places that Times editors put together for easy searching by their readers). Interestingly, you’ll find that the two lists barely overlap.
Not only that, but some of the keywords that people were searching for, such as “China,” don’t easily fit into one of the Times Topics categories: would you find China under the Places heading? Or would it make more sense to search for it under Subject?
In other words, it would seem – from looking at the Most Searched page and the Times Topics page – as though people are searching the Times in different ways than the way the Times editors assumed they would.’ Read more….