Giving you what you want and what you need

Editorial dicusssions for the front page sometimes center on what stories readers want as opposed to information they need. One former editor of mine said a paper's mantra should be "tell them something they don't know but need to know." Most times the story fits both, but occasionally the choice isn't all that clear. Crime stories are usually the most read but the information they relay is not always that important. The biggest worry for some is that if we decide our stories in a popularity contest we become a tawdry gossip rag or, as politics editor Gary Scott says, fetish-based journalism. I don't agree with Jeff Jarvis that news has already gone tawdry, but I thought the numbers that show what the BBC wants us to read as opposed to what we want to read is interesting. The NY Times also has an interesting popular story page as well.