Ric Romero must have moved north. News Flash! Websites that post pet pics are popular!

Also that their traffic is composed entirely of scrapers downloading their galleries to use as content.

I wonder where they got that idea.

Next there going to tell me that using scantily clad young females also helps sell products.

bah humbug. idiocracy, and all that.

Would you have guessed pet videos, celebrity slideshows, and fashion show pics?

No way. You're kidding right?

and every one attacked the tabloid press, but they were doing it right all along.

/dont forget batboy

Considering the "stories" that routinely make the CNN front page, yes I would have guessed it.

Hopefully these readers are given a vehicle to voice how much they don't care.

zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz...

'Sad' tag hiding today?

Ambitwistor: Considering the "stories" that routinely make the CNN front page, yes I would have guessed it.

Can you and your half of the country stop pretending CNN is a legitimate news source?

Anyone see the "Dicks in Bars" article top right?? Whoa

It's even less of a news site than it was previously, which is to say, it isn't one at all now.....

moothemagiccow: Ambitwistor: Considering the "stories" that routinely make the CNN front page, yes I would have guessed it.

Can you and your half of the country stop pretending CNN is a legitimate news source?

CNN is a legitimate news source. Half the time.

Generation_D: Ric Romero must have moved north. News Flash! Websites that post pet pics are popular!

I work for a paper who allows readers to post pics of their pets, so I'm getting a kick....

Nothing Sweeter Than Redneck Tears: (Stranger) saying that about the (Seattle PI) is like (pot kettle black)

No, actually it isn't. Because The Stranger has always just been a local rag with no pretensions that it's a source of journalism or news, whereas the Seattle PI was Seattle's oldest newspaper. Seeing it reduced to this...well, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to comment about that.

And besides, RTA. The Stranger isn't saying anything about the PI - the PI said it about themselves.

Take it away, keyboard cat.

I hate to break it to them, but a hell of a lot of their former customers were buying the paper version mostly for the comic strips.

Nothing significant has changed, here.

Hey! What happened to the post with the link to the map with the 1918 flu progression? It was right after the pot and kettle pic. I went to that map, came back and reloaded, and the post was gone? WTF??

Ooops. Reading two threads at once, back and forth. Got confused. Please delete both my posts here.

karmachameleon: Nothing Sweeter Than Redneck Tears: (Stranger) saying that about the (Seattle PI) is like (pot kettle black)

No, actually it isn't. Because The Stranger has always just been a local rag with no pretensions that it's a source of journalism or news, whereas the Seattle PI was Seattle's oldest newspaper. Seeing it reduced to this...well, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to comment about that.

And besides, RTA. The Stranger isn't saying anything about the PI - the PI said it about themselves.

still doesnt explain why the stranger has sucked since 1996...or why the pi has always sucked, for that matter.

ToasterRadio must be new here. *points and laughs*

actualhuman

You'd think so, wouldn't you? But nah, I've been reading fark for a long time, since the early aughts. Actually went total fark one year, then got so busy I didn't have time to photoshop anymore. Didn't get an account again until '07, but I've been here right along. Never had a link greenlighted, more evidence of my lameness...

(pokes with a stick) yep, it's deader than we thought.

Given that the most popular story ever published in the Seattle P-I by an order of magnitude above second place was the one about the guy dying after getting screwed by a horse, I think they are very well aware of what kind of news generates traffic.

i buy that. i just spent an hour on youtube last night watching videos of english mastiffs playing with kittens. that's what insomnia will do to ya! Looking for doggies playing with kitties videos.



he's a big sweetie!

Horse sex story was online hit
Friday, December 30, 2005 - Page updated at 11:30 AM

By Danny Westneat
Seattle Times staff columnist
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2002711400_danny30.html (pops)


As I look back at the year in news, it's clear I should have focused more on people having sex with horses.

That's the conclusion I reach after reviewing a new list of the year's top local news stories. Only this list is not the usual tedious recounting by news editors or pundits who profess to speak for you readers. This is the people's-choice list.

It's not a survey of what news you say you read.

It's what you actually read.

By tallying clicks on our Web site, we now chart the most read stories in the online edition of The Seattle Times. Software then sorts the tens of thousands of stories for 2005 and ranks them. Not by importance, impact or poetic lyricism, but by which stories compelled the most people to put finger to mouse, click, open and, presumably, read.

Which brings me back to sex with horses. The story last summer about the man who died from a perforated colon while having sex with a horse in Enumclaw was by far the year's most read article.

What's more, four more of the year's 20 most clicked-upon local news stories were about the same horse-sex incident. We don't publish our Web-traffic numbers, but take it from me - the total readership on these stories was huge.

[skipping past the long list]

So much so, a case can be made that the articles on horse sex are the most widely read material this paper has published in its 109-year history.

I don't know whether to ignore this alarming factoid or to embrace it.

It's not just the horse sex. The rest of the top 20 people's-choice list is eye-opening, as well.

Some of it was great storytelling, particularly a wrenching account, at No. 2, of a North Bend man finding photos on a Thai beach that captured a Canadian couple's last moments before the tsunami hit.

[skipping past the other mentions]

My local news columnist colleague, Nicole Brodeur, did get a column into the top 20. It was a great column that became a conversation piece around town. And it was about ... horse sex.

There's got to be a lesson in all this. Maybe the Web favors shorter, more emotional stories, and all you paying subscribers are happily wading through my columns on transit policy or our three-part projects.

Or, maybe, some of us are not giving readers enough of what you really want.

That's what a newspaper in Chile concluded. Las Últimas Noticias - The Latest News - was described as "a middle-of-the-road piece of nothing" until it opted to let readers choose the news.

Now every editorial decision is based on Web-traffic stats. Popular stories beget similar coverage. Unpopular stories get killed. Reporters are even paid by whose stories get the most clicks.

It sounds crass and shallow. It's also now Chile's most widely read paper.

So we in the news business enter 2006 with one eye on the future and, whether we admit it or not, one eye fixed firmly on our Web stats. It could lead to some schizophrenia, like that old Saturday Night Live skit on subliminal news:

"The state Legislature convened today in Olympia (horse sex), and Seattle officials (bestiality) requested funds for a new viaduct (perforated colon)."

This was one bizarre year, wasn't it? For the sake of my line of work, here's hoping for more of the same in 2006.

fark journalism.


/just graduated with a b.a. in journalism.

Jeeezus! What is up with old journalists crying in their beer (boad typewriters) about how their stories about last night's city council meeting aren't popular?? God, the egos of some people.

It's not about popularity, it's about IMPORTANCE. Yeah, pet pictures are a more predictable readership and income stream, but wait until a plane crashes at the local airport. Where the hell are those readers going to be going then?

It might just be that a newspaper's worth of news, once every 24 hours, is about all the actual news that's worth reading for anyone. But cable and the Internet have created the infinite news hole, and as a result the rare important story can seem outmatched by the ocean of time-wasting crap.

But it's not outmatched, even if it isn't popular. The people involved will know the information is out there.

I wonder what Seattle Pie tastes like. My guess is coffee, rainwater and uncut female armpit hair.

El Robbo: Yeah, pet pictures are a more predictable readership and income stream, but wait until a plane crashes at the local airport.

The problem is that newspapers want money. Money comes from ads. Ads pay for eyeballs. So a newspaper that wants to make money needs to get the largest possible number of eyeballs on those ads.

El Robbo: Where the hell are those readers going to be going then?

Probably on Fark, in the thread about it. Or twittering about it with their friends. Or glued to the TV. One of the last places they'll end up is the local paper's website.

buzzvert: I wonder what Seattle Pie tastes like. My guess is coffee, rainwater and uncut female armpit hair

and low tide

t3knomanser: Probably on Fark, in the thread about it. Or twittering about it with their friends. Or glued to the TV. One of the last places they'll end up is the local paper's website.

The last place? Are you clueless or just dumb?

Ever tried to load a local newspaper's Web site when a big event is occurring in their town? You can't. They get absolutely crushed from the traffic. The local paper's Web site is the first, second and third place people go for information about local events - especially breaking news.

Fark will link to the newspaper's Web site, so will the Twitterers and the TV news will be calling the newspaper newsroom for information.

In other words, you haven't the faintest idea about what you're talking about.

moothemagiccow :

Can you and your half of the country stop pretending CNN is a legitimate news source?

Whoosh. That's the sound of my point whizzing over your head.

Wasn't it the PI that would print the answer to the daily Sudoku upside down right next to the puzzle?

/Mebbe it was the Times
//They were too easy anyways
///I just read the paper for the comics...

I thought their recent report on global warming reflects what put them out of business. Planet hasn't been warming for ten years and their investigative skills overlooked that.

Subby: Would you have guessed pet videos, celebrity slideshows, and fashion show pics?

In other words, people in Seattle don't want news.

They want Fark.

RandomAxe: I hate to break it to them, but a hell of a lot of their former customers were buying the paper version mostly for the comic strips.

No kidding - they had a really good selection of comics, but that was about it...

*ghuff-huff* guys... *pant* guys, I just heard:

People like stupid shiat.

*pant*

Ayn Rand knew about this sort of thing back when she wrote an architect to rape a newspaper mogul's future adultress of a wife.

/If you don't orgasm by just looking at an Objectivist, you're a Commie.