Unjournalism

Holy missing the point, Batman

Posted on November 9th, 2006 by Mike Keliher
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Alan Mutter, some “CEO in Silicon Valley” who I’ve never heard of until Jim Romenesko linked to him, has a recent blog post that tries to be insightful - hell, he even did some primary research - but comes off as a little short-sighted.

Mutter seems bothered that many of the most-often e-mailed stories from newspapers’ Web sites - a commonly tracked piece of data on those sites - don’t deal with serious political issues such as the election and Donald Rumsfeld’s departure but rather “a no-knead bread recipe in the New
York Times [and...] a USA Today story about a naked man arrested for
carrying a concealed weapon.”

Mutter also suggests that this prominence of less-than-hard news in the “most e-mailed” lists “suggests there is a major disconnect between what editors want to print and what readers want to read.” Interesting, but…

How about applying some common sense to your research, Alan?

As Romenekso said, “I say this suggests that people know that their friends already have
read a million stories about the election and don’t want another one
e-mailed to them.” In fairness, Mutter gets close to this point on his own, but he still misses a big idea:

First, I’m sure my friends are capable of finding their own election- and Rumsfeld-related news. It can’t be missed, really. Plus, that shit’s boring. I gnaws at you after a while. More importantly, Mutter fails to understand the true nature of the “viral” spreading of news stories when people implement that little “e-mail this story” function on a news Web site. For the most part, anything someone sends is going to be useful (like, I don’t know, no-knead bread, maybe) or damn funny (like a naked guy finding a way to conceal a weapon - I don’t want to know…).

When I send a friend a news story, I don’t want to bog him down with another almost-profound piece about the election. I’m sending him stuff that will make him chuckle, and I hope he’ll return the favor.

Technorati Tags: Romenesko, Alan Mutter, most e-mailed, election, politics, news