Alex Massie Alex Massie

Stuff Readers Like

Further to this post on the media and What Readers Want, it’s always useful to have a gander at the New York Times’s most emailed stories. For sure, this is no infallible guide but it is a useful snapshot of reader opinion in as much as it’s a list of the stories readers most frequently recommend to their friends. Here’s today’s list.

  1. In Shift to Digital, More Repeat Mammograms
  2. Latest College Reading Lists: Menus With Pho and Lobster
  3. Equestrians’ Deaths Spread Unease in Sport
  4. Magazine Preview: The Aria of Chris Matthews
  5. Findings: And Behind Door No. 1, a Fatal Flaw
  6. Maureen Dowd: Toil and Trouble
  7. Well: Keeping Priorities Straight, Even at the End
  8. The Food Chain: As Prices Rise, Farmers Spurn Conservation Program
  9. Wine Bars Grow Up and Squeeze In
  10. A Disease That Allowed Torrents of Creativity

You’ll notice what’s missing: hard news stories. And this from the readers of America’s best newspaper, the paper with more resources than any other and that prides itself (however dubiously) upon being a “paper of record”.

Instead it’s a list of lifestyle items with a couple of features and some opinion thrown in. Plus, of course, the mandatory story concerning animals. Editors should always remember that readers – especially, though far from exclusively, women readers – like animals more than they like people.

Comments