I just noticed the (great) new Miami Herald Web site has a story recommendation feature. Users can vote up articles and push them up to the top of a little box featured prominently on the frontpage. Currently, Carl Hiaasen's indictment of Sarah Palin is claiming the top spot, with more than triple the votes of the second place story.
That is the issue with gadgets like this: stories that espouse opinions or take sides on an issue will inevitably be more popular than straight news articles. Even if a terribly important event happens, it will likely be overshadowed here by something like Heather Locklear "spinning out of control" (currently number five on the list, with six votes). After all, nobody's going to recommend a story about the economy skydiving or a catastrophic natural disaster because it would feel like endorsing that event or something.
I'd be interested to see what percentage of users have ever hit that recommendation button. I've ticked it a few times on the Chicago Sun-Times' site, but even their most popular columnists only get up to like ten ticks.
Tuesday, September 30, 2008
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1 comments:
One good thing: the website editors can focus on the important stuff, never worrying that their readers won't find something shallow and fun (or very opinionated) up top.
ie we don't have to sell out for clicks. We can count on the readers to help us out there.
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